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?
4 Comments
topaz
Hi Dean.
I like the idea of a filing system. A lot. Thank you for sharing this again.
I remember you didn’t recommend starting ones own magazine for various reasons.
Would you suggest doing one, maybe if monthly is too often, for the sake of having a filing system?
Just wondering.
Best regards
Topaz
dwsmith
Well, you won’t make any real cash flow on it, but it helps me in my writing knowing there is a place for my stories to go and the filing system has just turned out to be a bonus. Totally depends on how prolific you are and if you like holding physical products in your hands.
Michael W Lucas
I’ve learned that however organized I am, I do not have the information I need conveniently on hand.
I have Amazon and IngramSpark covers for all my books, but I need BookVault versions. This isn’t hard: load up the IS version, grab the BV template, move over, adjust by about .02″ here and there, export a PDF to BV standards, done.
But I need the page count and paper type of each book, lol.
Thinking I’ll gather all the info, add them to my title spreadsheet, and churn them out, one after the other. Might even hire my first ever virtual assistant to do this. I mean, the covers exist: they just need conversion, one after another. It’s grunt work.
Back in 2011 I never would have guessed I should start collecting this information…
dwsmith
Yeah, back in 2013 when the first issue of Smith’s Monthly came out, I had no clue how useful collecting it like that would be. Not a clue, and for me, having the physical copies right at hand instead of having to search files is just an amazing bonus.
Isn’t it amazing that those of use who daily look to the future forgot to look to a future in this one damn organization level. (grin)