I started using one at work and found it useful and fun. Once I went on an advanced spreadsheet course and found there was just me and the tutor. No surprise therefore to learn I keep a spreadsheet (with at least six pages) to keep track of my poems and I have over a 1,000 mainly failed attempts at a poem but I like to keep everything. I have one sheet which is just a list of poems written (including when, date revised, draft or finished or published and sometimes a brief description eg ekphraistic); another which is a list of magazines including the year/month it was sent; another a list of the magazines sent, date sent and date returned, comments, accepted or not, and another part of the sheet with the magazine, date sent and poem number(sorted by that); a simple list of poem published and where; plus two other sheets for pamphlets sent to publishers and reading attended.
It keeps me quite busy making sure everything is in order but it’s very satisfying. I could say it makes sure I don’t send the same poem to different magazines at the same time or I don’t keep sending the same poem to the same magazine, but it doesn’t always work. At the end of the year I can always count up how many poems (round the 50 mark) I’ve written and how many I’ve sent out to magazines (12 or so) and how many poems I’ve published (about 12). Any figure that makes me feel good really.
Of course there’s a sheet missing. There should be one for books read as well. Don’t ask me why there isn’t.
A useful webite or app is Feedly.com which allows you to list your favourite websites you want to read. So I have all my favourite blogs and poetry magazines in one place.
Rodney Wood 