Creating a Spreadsheet for Writing Submissions

I've heard many writers bemoan the business aspects of writing, but I was a girl who loved playing office--arranging those papers, pencils and pens each fall before school began, and filling notebooks with scribble before I knew how to write. I enjoy researching publications where I can send my work (what a great procrastination technique!) and have finally started creating systems to keep track of it.

So when I sat with my latest printed pages and felt that awful feeling of being stuck as my inner editor examined and questioned--"what is this piece really about? what is the focus? where is this going? what's the reader to take away from this? is this the right timing to consider this piece or would it be better to set it aside and work on something else?"--I switched tasks. I completed the writing submissions spreadsheet I've intended for ages to make: an excel sheet I can update.

My tendency is to look at the glass half empty, to see what's missing from my writing life, to beat myself up over all the time wasted, the projects unfinished, the essays unsent. Writing down this list of essays and short stories I've written, most of it from grad school (and there's more that didn't fit into the screen shot), and seeing that I have been working on revisions as well as sending out work (and meeting success), is certainly a motivator for tackling the list and taming that inner critic.