My Filing System

I Am Both Organized and Not Organized

For 67 months, I did Smith’s Monthly Magazine. Had one short break in the middle somewhere and now it has been on hiatus for over two years because of the life rolls.

But it is coming back.  Soon.

The last few days I discovered once again why I loved doing that magazine and what is really important to me about it almost more than anything.

It is my filing system.

Every month I would publish four or five or six short stories. I never repeated a short story, so there are 270 different stories in those 67 issues. There are also novels and non-fiction books and collections. But what I keep track of is the 270 short stories. I have them all on a spreadsheet with which issue and and the series character and also the name of a collection it was in along the way.

In the last few days I have been putting together four major Poker Boy collections and right there, at my finger tips, was each story. And where the file for the story could be found.

Now granted, I do have a few hundred more stories that are not in Smith’s Monthly yet. Which is why I got to get back doing the magazine because it is my filing system. And it really, really works. And without it, I am stunningly disorganized.

Now ain’t that just silly?