The Hermit Poet

I’ve been thinking again that it would be really useful to have an effective and portable way of tracking my poetry submissions. Up until now I’ve been using a private WordPress.com blog to track my submissions. It has some advantages, but also a number of limitations.

I like the open structure of a blog — I use a separate blog entry for each poem and then can simply note in the entry the journals it has been submitted to and when, as well as the responses. Since it isn’t a traditional database or spreadsheet, I’m not limited by length restrictions. On the other hand, there is a fair amount of duplication of effort — and I only include names and dates. A more robust database where the journals have their own information readily available would be nice.

Enter the Writer’s Database — a free online service available at Luminary Publishing Services. It’s an online database which is fully customizable by you the writer.

Now, it’s clear that this was intended primarily for fiction writers, but it can also serve the needs of a poet nicely. It also requires some ramp up time because each new market must be created as a new entry in the database. However, once a market has a record, you don’t need to enter that information again. Furthermore, it allows you to enter both the online and physical addresses, as well as any additional notes you wish (eg. the editor prefers long poems). Likewise individual submissions can be annotated.

It’s an interesting and seemingly effective database — I’ll play with it more in the upcoming weeks and report back on how I find it in practice.