Oct 20 2008
Organizing Your Poetry
As poets and writers we tend to have stacks of our work sitting around the house gathering dust. I’ve been asked many a time, in fact I was asked this today, “I have hundreds of poems laying around so what do I do now?” The first thing to do is organize your poetry whether or not you will be submitting for publication doesn’t matter really but you need to be organized. Back in prehistoric times when I was asking myself this question there were no computers. Yes, I know hard to believe but true. So, I would type my poem on my typewriter with carbon copy so I always had an extra copy then I would three hole punch the copy and file into a three ring binder of which I had indexed for specific poems. In other words nature poems would be filed with nature, love with love and so on. Oddly enough I still do that because I like to have hard copies of all my work. Of course now I type them on the computer 
Whatever works for you is fine. You can have different folders online for different subjects or you can use a binder or even regular folders marked with each different subject and have them filed in a cabinet or file box. The point being you need to organize in order to work with your poetry. Another good idea is to have index cards with the titles of your poems. This is also good for keeping track of where you submitted your poems and the date in which they were submitted. You choose what is right for you.
The absolute key is to be organized.
Unfortunately I am not very organized all the time. I have files for all my work, but they seem to still be pilled up to be filled by subject. Due to your post today I think I will begin the filling process now. Great post as always.
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Thanks Robin. I am very forgetful these days so organization for me is a must.
You know, I still have poems I hand-wrote AGES ago in a folder somewhere. I have no idea where the folder is. I need to look for it, type the poems, and store them on my hard drive. Thanks for the reminder to get organized with my creative writings.
Kouji, Yes I can say that i do not miss those carbon days
attygnorris, thanks for the comment and it is easier once you get organized.
I recently moved and realized just how many thousands of unorganized pages of handwritten material I have. What a headache! I know I’ll benefit from getting it in order though.
Yes, it can be quite the pain. Thanks for reading.