It’s been a long and interesting journey to take my old SuperCard project for tracking submissions and transfer my data to a LibreOffice database. After getting things working to may satisfaction, I’ve spent the last week or two tweaking the database and making it look a little nicer, then I deleted my data, so I can make it available to others. SubTracker, as I am now calling it, is downloadable as a Zip archive that contains the database and a Readme file.
Posting the file on my website is the first step in allowing others to use the database to track their own submissions. I have set it up to work well for me, but I have also made it fairly easy to modify by creating lists where you can change or add to the Kinds (poem, story, book, chapbook, etc.), Genres (poetry, fiction, CNF, etc.), or Types of places (magazine, book publisher, fellowship, etc.). You could even use this database to track MFA program applications, readings, artist residencies, etc.
Next steps will be to add a discussion of common issues, such as how to import existing data into the database. If you haven’t been submitting for long, it will be easiest to enter data manually, but if you have years of submissions and you’d like to bring them into the database, it is possible to do so with a little planning.
Help on how to use LibreOffice or OpenOffice to navigate the database will also be forthcoming. Your questions and comments will help me know what help is needed. Though I can’t guarantee support for something I’m making available for free, I do want to answer questions here on my blog.
I hope SubTracker will be useful to you and make your writing life a little easier.
Kendall Dunkelberg 