I thought getting a notebook (as in the paper kind) would help with my writing and stop the aggravation I often experience when writing on my crappy laptop. Little did I know how well this would work!

The ideas are pouring forth now and the new story idea that had stumped me for months is now taking shape. I also did some quick research tonight to get the time-line straight and work out what would and wouldn't have been possible during the time the story is set (although there is always room for creative fabrication and fiddling of facts).

The deadline for this story is fast approaching, so I'm glad the various elements have started falling into place. I hope this quickly leads into the "critical-mass" stage, where I can almost always sit down and write it all out in a couple of sittings, and then let it stew for awhile so I can look at it with a reasonably fresh eye during editing. The clock is ticking! Fingers crossed :)

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Today I read an interesting entry about manuscript tracking on Tom Bates's journal. He references a Bud Sparhawk (SF writer) article and then goes on to explain how he personally keeps track of submissions. It was interesting reading about his approach and comparing it with my own.

I used to keep track of story submissions using a Word document (my 'daily writing log'), recording submission and response dates for every story, the word counts, editing of new drafts, and "to-do" lists for future drafts. This was fine to begin with, but after awhile it became a royal pain to keep track of the status of each story.

I tried an Excel spreadsheet, but that seemed like it'd get a bit messy and hard to read, so I was planning on writing a custom Windows app for this purpose. Then, while browsing through the Andromeda Spaceways website, I found a neat little app called Sonar, written by Spacejock Software (the author also writes SF, funnily enough!).

Sonar keeps track of manuscript status, allowing you to enter in details of manuscripts, publications and submissions. At a glance, you can look over the submission history for each story and see what state it's in at any point in time. It sure beats paging through a Word doc :) It's also free, but donations are encouraged.

I still use my Word doc as a backup, and I've just started keeping track of postage costs. This is something I should've done a long time ago, and should help ease my paranoia about the cost of postage when I'm re-posting manuscripts. I should also cut back on post office visits and just stamp the big yellow envelopes myself every time. For some reason I find it oddly reassuring to see them off at the post office, rather than dumping them unceremoniously into the nearest post-box and wondering if I've added enough postage to get the envelopes to their respective destinations. Curiouser and curiouser...