Found - a submissions recording system that works for me

My first submissions book - so neat!

For a long time I have been trying to find a way of recording my submissions that works for me. Everyone swears by Excel, but its not for me. I think it's that link to maths (formulas) and boxes that does it. Besides sometimes I don't want to have to switch my laptop on every time I want to check something.

I chatted to a few people online about it. One person uses a Table in Word. Mmm, a possibility, but I remember when I was in one particular job when I worked with a Table and all was fine until I had to inset new stuff. The bottom lines disappeared. They weren't on the next page. Where had they gone? It was like they had gone off into the ether. They were never seen again! No, far too risky, that.

So after reviewing all my options I came up with record cards. How old skool! I had a box doing nothing, so I bought some cards and set about organising things. I found this to be quite enlightening as I dug out my very first submission book which took me back to 1991. I began this while I was taking a creative writing course with The Writer's Bureau. I only ever got about half way through the course as I struggled with the assignments on areas of writing I had no intention of pursuing, like interviewing people for articles. I'm not a confident person and was a nervous wreck doing that first and only one I ever did. I did sell the article, but it was too stressful for me to carry on. All the stuff I wanted to learn came in the last part of the course, which I never got to. However, I did submit many 'reader's letters' to magazine and was successful, but again it wasn't really me.

I began writing poetry after that and that's virtually all I did until 2013. Then I found the first ever flash fiction I had published, also that year, with the lovely Paragraph Planet, and I do sill submit to them now and then. My first short story was published by Gold Dust in 2015, and then I decided to tackle a novel! Actually, I went back to one I'd started years ago and abandoned as I had no idea about plotting and ran out of steam. I finished it though it remains unpublished (I submitted it once only, but it has been edited many times!). The novel I am still working on was submitted for the first time in 2016, and with further edits, cuts and re-writes is on it's fourth submission!

My poetry has been sorted, sort of, using two files, though it is out of date. Sometime I need to look at that and maybe use record cards for those also. Still, I now have all non-poetry writing on record cards so I can instantly see where it's been before and not get into that horrific position of submitting to the same place twice! I still use my submissions book as I find it useful (and is a back up).

First flash success recorded with Paragraph Planet 

Everything except poetry that has been submitted is here!

Sometimes it takes a few goes to get a success

If anyone is looking for some help with writing short stories there is a new free online course here. The course runs for 10 weeks and the lessons will stay online afterwards. Toby teaches Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck, so he knows what he's talking about.