Story list update

Back in March, I gave the random tip to keep track of everything you can for your writing.  To recap my situation, in Excel I had a Submission List where I kept track of every story I submitted, where, when, when I heard back, and when/if it was published.  I also had a Publication List, that listed in order each of my published stories, but I only counted the first time they were published.  This list also had a one sentence outline for each story to make it easier for me to find them since I’ll remember that I wrote a story about X, but can’t remember what title I gave for it.  Nice and straight forward, except my numbers didn’t match, and there were other things I wanted to keep track of.  After putting off making a new list for years, I finally decided to do it, and part of the reason for that post was to make myself do it.  Well, I didn’t expect to finish this new list so soon, but I’ve had some internet issues, so instead of spending hours watching YouTube videos, I worked on these new lists.

Anyway, while working on the new lists, I realized that I actually had a third list of my stories.  On my website I like to have a little blurb about my stories and a link to them if they are online.  Turns out, between the three lists, I had just about every mistake option.  There were stories on my Submission List that weren’t on my Publication List and vice versa.  And I had stories on my lists that weren’t on my website, and even one story on my website, but not on either list.  (That’s an interesting tale, but for another day.) But after countless hours of work, I can say that my new Submission List, my new Publication List, and my website are all in agreement, more or less.  There are a couple stories missing from my website, but they were first posted on websites that no longer exist and have been posted elsewhere, or in one case is a story I don’t really like that is still up on a dying website.  And there could be some fundamental flaw in my lists, but to the best of my knowledge I’ve covered everything.

So what did I find out?  Well, as of the posting of this blog, “Old Story” is my 679th published story.  My most recent publication is a reposting of the story “Worst Foot Forward,” which marks my 243rd reposting of a story.  Now, some of these reposted stories have been reposted three, four, and I think in one case even five times as they made the circuit of dying websites.  I haven’t worked out exactly how many of my stories I’ve reposted, but if for some reason I ever wanted to, I could figure it out.  Part of the reason I got around to finally redoing these lists, is because I jokingly thought that the reason I was able to publish so many stories is because half of them were under 500 words.  Well, now I know that 429, or over 63% of my published stories are under 500 words.  The full numbers are, I have 39 stories of 100 words or less, 155 between 101-250 words, 235 between 251-500 words, 116 between 501-750 words, 57 between 751-1,000 words, 59 between 1,001-2,500 words, 12 between 2,501-5,000 words, 4 between 5,001-10,000 words, and two over 10,001 words.  If you’re curious, my shortest story at only 20 words is “Never Done,” which is on a dying website and some may find in poor taste.  My longest story is “Relics” at 15,794 words, which some may also find in poor taste.

The other things I’ve found out, is that 612 of my stories, or 90.1%, were published by me, while 30, or 4.4% were published on a friend’s website or by a writing group I was a part of.  The remaining 37 or 5.4% were published by someone else.  The total number of words in all my published stories (using the word length of the most recent reposting) is 428,857 words.  I also have been keeping track of how many words I write each day for the past twenty years, and that stands at just over 863,000.  Meaning there are over 434,000 words that I’ve either cut from stories or are in stories I’ve started but never finished.   

Stories weren’t the only things I kept lists on, since I also dabble a bit in poetry.  These are mostly haiku, but there are a few non-rhyming poems thrown in.  Again, I had a Submission List, Publication List, and my Website list, and even though I do far less poetry than stories, these were somehow even more out of whack.  I had haiku on my website that didn’t show up on either list, and haiku on at least one list but not on my website.  It felt like it took just as long for me to hammer it all into shape as it did my stories. 

My most recent new poetry publication, is the haiku “the rich get richer” which is my 132nd poem.  My most recent poem publication is the reposting of “Stealer of Daylight,” which is my 35th poem repost.  Of my published poems, 116, or 87.9% are haiku, while the other 16, or 12.1%, are non-rhyming.  I’ve published 129, or 97.7% of my poems, 1, or 0.8%, were published by a writing group I was in, and the other 2, or 1.5%, were published by someone else.

So that is the update on my story/poem lists.  But it’s not the end.  When I decided to write a quick outline for my published stories so I could find them easier, I also realized I should do that for my unpublished stories.  Sometimes I’ll remember that I started a story about X, but can’t remember how far I got with it.  So I have an Unpublished List, that has the title or working title, what type it likely is – be it a short story, or more like a novella which also indicates which folder I have it in – as well the brief outline.  I set all this up, and kept it updated for a while, but I haven’t done such a good job for the past year or so.  Which means my next project will be sorting all that out and getting it up to date.  Which will be annoying because I’ll be revisiting all these stories that held so much promise, but I never got around to finishing.  Joy.