A Submission Chart Seems Like A Good Idea...

I do understand that charts can be an efficient means of transmitting or storing info. Really, I do. I've tried charts for all kinds of things. So this Writer Musings: Submission Tracking Chart calls out to me.

Here's the problem I've had with charts: I can't hold on to them. Or, when I've filled them out, I can't get around to printing out another. Truly, it's not them, it's me.

As far as submissions are concerned, I've tried keeping track of, say, short story and essay submissions on the inside of folders that contained a draft of the manuscript, back in the days when I was more likely to have a hard copy draft of the manuscript. The problem with that was that if I was being efficient, the file went into a cabinet. Back in the day when all submissions were made through the mail, sometimes a form rejection would arrive with nothing regarding what manuscript was being rejected and then I didn't know what submission it went to because I have a lot of files in my cabinets. Come on! Sometimes it would take months editors to get back to authors. How were we supposed to remember?

I've also tried keeping an expandable file with hard copies of all my rejected submissions for one particular project, which sounds organized, except I would have to keep going through all the materials in the folder to find out where I'd submitted. So then I made a list somewhere, though now I'm thinking, I should have made the list on the outside of the folder, huh?

Last summer I made a bunch of short story submissions and kept a list with dates on a white board here in the office. It's still there.

Most recently, I've been thinking about keeping track in my new journal software, because I shouldn't be able to lose that, should I?