Organizing your haiku

[Julie B. K.]

I just realized that I have more than 300 haiku & short form poems out on Twitter.  What is the best way to organize them?  ???   I can't seem to wrap my mind around how to structure the collection.  I used to just log one poem per Word document in a Poetry folder on my computer when I wrote longer forms, but that seems excessive for short forms.  Maybe one haiku per index card & throw them all in a recipe box?

How do you organize your haiku?  Thanks in advance for sharing.   :)

Julie B. K.

[AlanSummers]

Hi Julie,

Is this a continuing on from this thread?
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/new-to-haiku-free-discussion/goal-setting/

Are all these poems published and then put on twitter?  Or are some or all of them in twitter magazines like 4x20 for instance?

You certainly have enough haiku to consider for a collection, or a collection competition:
http://www.snapshotpress.co.uk/contests/book_awards/guidelines.htm

Manuscripts submitted in category C should comprise of 60–100 short poems. These may be of any, or of mixed, genre, and may include free verse, prose poems, monostichs, sonnets, villanelles, haiku, tanka, senryu, sequences, etc., providing each individual poem does not exceed 25 lines.

Index or record cards are a good idea, and can be loosely alphabetized.  If you can clear a large space, maybe the lounge floor, or bedroom floor, you can work out themes.

How many are purely urban, and purely nature or Natural History?  Subdivide them into categories.

If you write Natural History or nature poems, divide them into birds, animals, trees etc...

I did have trouble organising my second collection, but thankfully my editor and publisher is doing that all for me.  But I know it's not easy when it's your own work.

I spent four years organising my first collection, so if you aren't in a hurry, there's nothing to worry about.  If you are keen to enter a collection competition, then I'd start buying and filling in those index cards.

Handwriting is a good way to absorb the poems all over again.  Or you could just put them in a word.doc with two columns, and paperslice them afterwards.

all my best,

Alan

I just realized that I have more than 300 haiku & short form poems out on Twitter.  What is the best way to organize them?  ???   I can't seem to wrap my mind around how to structure the collection.  I used to just log one poem per Word document in a Poetry folder on my computer when I wrote longer forms, but that seems excessive for short forms.  Maybe one haiku per index card & throw them all in a recipe box?

How do you organize your haiku?  Thanks in advance for sharing.   :)

Julie B. K.

[nobodhi]

( am @nobodhi ... who are you ? )

Question : do you wish to arrange haiku so one might "follow" another ... in series ? (as in 'solo renku') ...  OR, do you wish to arrrange haiku so each is independent and completely new & fresh ?
(This is sort of like asking energy if it's a particle, or a wave ... when it's really a wavicle.)  You can compose constellations that create an entire sky ... ... or ...

( the sky's the limit )


Question : looking through your haiku, do you find repetitions ?  If so, then take some time to review, collate, & cull.   (Me, I think there are 13-14 "kinds" of haiku i TEND to write ... )    Since haiku aren't as bulky as novels, you can write 1000s and tens of 1000s, then pick out ones that you feel are your gems ... 

Question : do you find thematic elements around which you could arrange "sets" ?  Examples : turning points in your life, places you've visited, seasons of the year, etc

Question : unlike as in twitter, you have complete control as to how your work would look on a page ... have you considered that too ?

Question : have you asked your haiku how they want to be organized ?

:)

[sandra]

Hello Julie,

I don't tweet so can't comment on that side of things.

I keep 2 word.doc files - one is the active file that I'm storing new, unpublished haiku in; the other is for published haiku and includes publication details (when, where).

Once a haiku is published it is cut from the first file and pasted into the other.

I print out each page of unpublished haiku as it is complete as a safety measure, but also have a back-up of this file on a data stick. I also print out each page of published haiku as it is complete and keep in a clear file, again as a back-up (I don't always have the journals, etc, that the poems appeared in).

At the beginning of this year I decided that my active file was getting pretty big so on January 1 started active2.

Hope this is some help.

[Julie B. K.]

Hi Alan -- It's not exactly a continuation of my previous thread, although it is a related problem.  I probably shouldn't have used the word collection in the header for this topic.  What I'd like to do is get a handle on my complete haiku output so that I can organize it into a collection or various collections.  My previous question touched upon how to structure a collection in a literary sense.  Right now, I'm more interested in the mechanics of managing haiku output -- how do I find the haiku I want, how do I keep from losing them, etc.  I have haiku everywhere -- scribbled in the pages of Frogpond, typed into the notes function of my iPhone, tweeted on Twitter, posted on my blog, sitting lonely in Word files.  There's no cohesion or long-term organization in my current storage methods.

To touch on nobodhi's suggestions -- I think my haiku want to be grouped together somewhere, in some mass storage device (physical or otherwise), so that they can talk to each other and play together.

So Sandra, yes, that does help.  Thank you.  I used to organize my nonfiction publications in this way by title - pending in one file and published in another.  It didn't occur to me to store complete haiku that way too.  

Right now, I am leaning toward Alan's suggestion of writing out all of my haiku in longhand on index cards -- poem on one side and dates of creation and publication (if applicable) on the other -- and sticking them into a recipe box or similar.  I can't say exactly why that appeals to me, but I do like the idea of re-experiencing the poem through the pen, especially since I typed many of these into a computer or phone the first time. 

I'm curious as to what everyone else does with their haiku.  Please share! 

Thanks to everyone for their help.

[Don Baird]

I'm currently filing my haiku by "keywords".  For example:

teetering grass
just moments ago
a dragonfly

... would be in the T's for teetering; and D's for dragonfly (alphabetized).  I could also file it under "grass" and "moments".  It takes a bit to get it going ... and I'm definitely behind, but I can find my haiku by subject (keyword) anytime I want.  If someone says, "hey, do you have one on and ANT"?, I can look under "A" and find it (them).  All "moon" ones are in the same category regardless if it is "the moon", "autumn moon", "smiling moon" etc.  However, "smiling moon" could be filed under "smile" as well ... "Autumn Moon" can be filed under Autumn as well.  It's always your call on where you decide to file them.

Just what I'm doing these days.  

Don

[chibi575]

If you want to do a keyword search all you have to do in Windows OS is SEARCH on phrase.  If you put information you might want to trace or if you have a theme you can search on that.  For examle, if I want to find all my poems with "dragonfly" I do a phrase search on my poem files or folders, it's part of the search criteria.

If you cut and paste all your tweets to a folder this will work on that folder too. 

The SEARCH will give results in a column sortable way, on file name, type, date, updated, and other criteria.  You can then organize the results of the SEARCH in a few handy ways.

I hope this helps.

[PAllen]

How 'bout an electronic recipe box in the form of a single Word document (& a backup) with all haiku in it. Each is titled with "catch" word(s), i.e. season, time of day, mood, etc.; the title may have several catch words.  A search can then be performed when looking for that special verse.  Also consider notes w/each verse to track any submitted / accepted / rejected.

Phil

[AlanSummers]

All good points, and I like Phil's because if you can't remember the phrase part or the fragment part, then this helps.

What is good about this, though, is that when certain anthologies come asking for submissions on particular themes, you'll have them cross-referenced.  Don't just go for keywords, but what the theme(s) of the haiku etc... touch on.

Alan

How 'bout an electronic recipe box in the form of a single Word document (& a backup) with all haiku in it. Each is titled with "catch" word(s), i.e. season, time of day, mood, etc.; the title may have several catch words.  A search can then be performed when looking for that special verse.  Also consider notes w/each verse to track any submitted / accepted / rejected.

Phil

[AlisonW]

For the last 10 years I haven't organised mine at all!  ???  I've just thrown them wildly around, some to journals, some on facebook, twitter etc, some on my public blog. All without any record whatsoever of what went where!

Lately I thought it was about time I got organised so I've just set up a private blog to keep them in. I've made it private so only I can see it. Being a blog its possible to search it easily for particular words or by journal name for previously published ones. It's also easy to add keywords for anything else that might be useful to search on. It's so much easier now to keep track of what I've submitted to journals and what the outcome was. If I ever do decide to collect them up it will be relatively straightforward as I'll have all the publication details attached to each haiku.

Maybe I should have done this years ago but I did enjoy just sharing without caring and I'm quite happy to be able to forget some of the earlier ones!!

Alison

[AlanSummers]

Alison has a good point.

Also, you can find your haiku (good and bad) by simply googling.

Michael and myself did google Alison for her haiku, and some of those results were ones that went into this fine anthology which Alison is featured: http://area17.blogspot.com/2010/11/fifty-seven-damn-good-haiku-by-bunch-of.html

It sounds like Alison has enough quality work to consider going for the Snapshot Press Book Collection!  If you've got them collated neatly as Alison suggests in a private blog, it'll help make things easier.

But do back them up on old-fashioned record cards or sheets of paper too! ;-)

Alan

[threebirds]

Speaking from personal practice, my writing is usually titled with the current date. That way they form a chronology of their own and have at least a point of reference where I can think upon the mood and point of life where said images stemmed from. They seem to follow various themes in response to the rhythms of personal life.

This is one method, probably not the most specific means of organising thoughts however.

[zoe_dw]

Hi Julie,

There's a program called Scrivener that I've been using and while I don't use it for Haiku I think it might be suitable as it works similar to an index card/recipe box style.  You can categorise/tag things, write notes about them, search, etc. It's not free but it's a fraction of the cost of Microsoft Word (I think it's about £25 to buy after the trial).

There's more information and screenshots on the site and the tutorial that comes with it is excellent.  It's a great way to organise a writing project from a single file.  The free trial lasts 30 days and only counts the days you actually use it instead of 30 calendar days:

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

[Julie B. K.]

Thanks, everyone!  Alison, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one facing this problem.  I, too, have found it very liberating - poetically speaking - to share without caring.  For now, I have a little recipe box with index cards in it and my own jumbled notations.  I have also found that I'm fine with letting go of a number of my early attempts and just storing the ones that have potential or speak to me.  It's a good start, but I also plan to store them digitally at a later time.  It's fun for me to see what everyone else is doing.

[Lorin Ford]

 :) well, I guess it can become as complicated as we want, but the basic thing, imo, is to keep one file  of one's unpublished haiku and another of one's published haiku.

- Lorin