February 20th, 2009 / 7:43 pm
Submissions
Submission logs
The tight-rope of submissions, simultaneous submissions, acceptences, rejections, withdrawals, forthcomings, etc. is hard to balance. I eventually got too confused, and committed too many faux pas, that I finally devised an excel spread sheet listing a) the title of the piece, b) where it had been submitted too, c) where it had been rejected, and d) optimal/potential places to submit if needed. I think most writers have some sort of system. So what does your submission log look like?
Here’s mine:
Tabbing from cell to cell often feels like Frogger – squish.
Tags: MS excel, submission logs
I use a spreadsheet on Google Docs. Story title in the first cell, place of sent it in the next cells with “yes” and “no” after a hyphen when I’ve heard.
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i use excell too!!!!! although i have not been submitting. but i got a story, journal, date column too, and an out, n (short for no), published, withdrew, note (when someone is nice), and- ONE YEAR. I love using sort, “column d” and so on. Ahhhhh.
I thought about using duotrope’s thingy.
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February 20th, 2009 / 8:24 pmJimmy Chen—
i don’t understand how the duotrope thing works.
do editors update for their journal which they rejected, and is that synced with a writer’s account?
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February 20th, 2009 / 8:54 pmpr—
Well, I don’t really know, but I think it’s just for writers and that journals have nothing to do with it. It’s like a system writers can use? I looked into it years ago, and now I don’t really remember.
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February 20th, 2009 / 9:10 pmdarby—
I used the duotrope thing for a little while. It is actually useful because it lets you know when a submission is beyond an average response time and may warrant a query. I stopped using it because they deleted my account or something when they did an overhaul and I lost everything I was tracking, and since these are things I don’t want to lose track of, I feel safer now if I control it.
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February 22nd, 2009 / 4:17 pmdarby—
K, so I guess everyone freaked out about the comment here about losing the account. Duotrope just sent me a note and said my account is there, and it turns out it is there still with all the tracking info I had. There was a point where I could no longer access my account though last year, and I must have assumed that was the end and moved back to my own tracking. Anyway.
February 22nd, 2009 / 4:18 pmdarby—
Also, no one should dump on duotrope, they provide a great service.
I just have a word document with three lists. Submitted, Rejected, Accepted. Each item is title and where. For a long time when I was starting to do it, I was also parenthetically adding why it was rejected if a reason came, and if no reason came I’d say so and so says this sucks. So and so says you suck man. So and so says suck it. Here’s one: Pindeldyboz says ‘Walter’s Family’ is condescending to old people.
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February 20th, 2009 / 8:21 pmJimmy Chen—
haha walter’s family sounds awesome
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Mine looks much like this but I color coat it for accepted and rejected pieces. Virgin girl pink means published!
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February 20th, 2009 / 9:10 pmJimmy Chen—
hymen basher
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I use Duotrope with a Google docs backup. I’m considering tinkering with the Automator thingy on the Mac and creating a script that will play a .wav file that tells me in no uncertain terms that I suck and should give up each time I mark an entry as rejected. But this would probably make me sad.
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Excel, too. I track date of submission, what’s pending, what’s rejected. I keep it pretty simple. I’m not very computer savy anyway.
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i used to have an excel sheet thingy, but lost it when i left my flash drive on an airplane over christmas with all of the naked pictures of me on it too
i just have a duotrope thing now
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i rock duotrope now, after a long time of keeping either no track at all or trying to keep a stack of receipts and post-its and any other scrap of paper that happened to be around when i sent out a submission. duotrope keeps me much better organized, but if they lose my account like they did darby’s then i will be sad and lost out in the desert.
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I gently scribe responses upon a four-square slate tablet laid above my family’s peat-burning heath: all ‘yeas’ marked with a jaunty check-um, in the medium of choice elderberry jam; all ‘nays’ in Father’s putrescence! In his abominable, syphilitic excrement! Marked with a NO! A stout, bold NO! To once again confirm my non-place in the mazy corridor’s of His greatness!
O world! Is it my fault that I was born affixed to a muse who only whispers stories about jam, and sticky fingers covered in jam, and other jam-related complications? Jam it all to hell!
Stories heretofore rejected:
“Owen Winjam”
“The Altar of the Dead, Atop Which Lies a Jar of Jam”
“The Jam Stain in the Carpet”
“The Turn of the Jammed Screw”
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February 21st, 2009 / 12:56 pmpr—
D’Anthony is back! I think you are special. you can call yourself henry now if you want.
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i don’t use any physical method
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Darby, can you send me the old people story?
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I have a ridiculously long word doc in order of story date (when written) with all sorts of tabulations. it blows. i need to start using Excel.
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i use a pretty basic word doc, has title, date i submitted, and where. then i have two columns, rejected or accepted and once i hear back i move it to either category.
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Did Henry James the Younger somehow live like 700 years before “regular Henry James,” who is actually already HJ the Y, technically, so maybe this is HJ III we’re hearing from? Maybe he slipped into a time-warp somehow. I mean not to be a dick, but this jam-slinging wild man sounds like he might have hung with Chaucer, whereas the HJ I am given to only intermittently thinking about and almost never actually reading lived to see the invention of the automobile and into the first world war. just saying. also, i’m really really hungover. i’m sorry i brought this up. it’s probably obnoxious. but maybe it’s funny? i liked the part about burning peat. i bet peat was hard to come by on Washington Square. this is not a critique. the thing was funny. god it’s early. (it’s really not.) i use a word doc that lists where things have been sent on the bottom and where things are coming out on the top. after they come out i delete them off the list and put them on my website, so it’s a public record. if they get rejected i just delete the whole entry, which basically ensures maximum confusion, though when i submit i tend to create a new document titled for the journal i’m submitting to and then backfile it, so even though i dont have a record of what, say, McSweeney’s has already rejected, all I need to do when submitting to them again is go back through every file entitled TAYLORMcSw1 TAYLORMcSw2 etc, and see everything I sent already. This is a horrible way to do things. Nobody listen to me. Good morning!
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February 21st, 2009 / 12:58 pmpr—
Justin, this made me smile. “this is a horrible way to do things”. You are funny. Enjoy your hangover. Rock the Alka seltzer and v8 and a liter of water and you’ll be ready to go again tonight!
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reading about this has made me interested in everyone’s birth control tracking experiences
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February 21st, 2009 / 1:39 pmjimmy—
my form of birth control is masturbating into a walgreen’s plastic bag
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February 21st, 2009 / 1:50 pmpr—
pull out method. it works if the man is not a “leaker”.
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February 21st, 2009 / 11:52 pmryan—
i suggest vasectomy
my form of birth control is abstinence
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February 21st, 2009 / 4:22 pmmatthew savoca—
haha i love you
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I’ve never figured out a good way to do this. I still write it in a notebook and scratch off the rejections. I just to organize by journals, but now by stories.
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i use excel as well, i have row a) title of the piece, b) journal where i submitted, c) date sent, d) date response is received/accepted or rejected
i then keep separate files like this for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
this system appeals to my compulsive sensibilities.
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This is a great idea for a post. I used “scraps of paper I attached to a corkboard we left behind when we moved”. I can’t believe I never thought of using Excel.
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pullout? pr? i hope thats not what you’re expecting when we make love.
sorry i cant say anything smarter than this right now. my brain is still working in cliches. dribbles at a time.
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