My Submission Spreadsheet Tracks it All

Thrilling to see the wins, the losses, and all the ghosting that happens as a writer

Hey busy bees! Are you pitching? Submitting? Querying agents? Applying to jobs? Are you tracking all these moves? What’s that? You’re sending them out into a cyber abyss and waving them off, like a doomed wife seeing their husband set sail on the Titanic? Get your s**t together with my nifty little submission spreadsheet.

There are my ways to keep track of all the material we, as writers, send out into the universe. I’ve heard rumblings of people, for example, using Google Calendars to remind them of when to follow up with an editor. I am not one of those people because I ignore every pop up my laptop sends my way. But a spreadsheet? A spreadsheet I can work with.

I first started using a spreadsheet to keep track of my submissions after taking Rebecca L. Weber’s Freelance Writer Bootcamp, which I highly recommend to anyone who is venturing into the field. She generously provided her template to students, which served as a good foundation to build my own. I’ve been tweaking it to make it fit my needs and have landed, finally, on something that works for both my creative and client work. I can’t imagine my day-to-day life without it. More than an organizational tool, I consider it an accountability tool.