A Daunting Task

I have written several hundred articles in the past 7 years. I've always thought it was stupid to have them just sitting there, not doing anything. I also haven't kept very good track of them. So I came up with a cover letter to send out to regional magazines offering them my backlog. I then gave them the topics that I generally cover and told them to contact me for a list of titles under the topic they are interested in.

Now I have to get a list of all those titles together and make sure the document is in the right folder. Theres a couple of problems with this.

1. I don't have all my work. Basically, I've just put them in a general folder along with interviews, etc. Some were misplaced and while I've tried to keep a link to the online copy of everything, I know I have missed a bunch.
2. I've changed computers a couple of times. Of course, I saved them on floppys, but some of my floppys won't open.
3. The names I have on my doc.s don't match the title they were published under. I am not a good title person. I let my talented editors come up with that. For instances, my doc says Children's Carseats. The actual title it's finally published under says, Oops Don't do it Again: Everything you Need to Know About Buying, Installing and Using Carseats Correctly. Chances are that will sell better than children's carseats... so I have to go through the iParenting's entire online archive and try to match my docs to the online names and gather the ones I missed. Right now, I am just saving the links, but eventually I will want to copy and paste all my missing articles into my now neatly organized folders.
4. Can we say tedious?

In other news, I have two crits back on my proposal. Well done! I still have some stuff to work on to address the editor's concerns. One of my main problems is the characterization of my main character. Unfortunately, she is most like the actual girls I know. She pretty much has everything. Lots of money, parents who adore her, looks and friends...plus being a fab figure skater. 90 percent of the figure skaters I know are just like her. So I gave her parents who are breaking up to give her more sympathy. her perfect world isn't so perfect anymore, but that doesn't come across in the manuscript... So I am going to go over it again and see what I can do.

The thing is... Okay, let's see if I can explain this... I think she is the one teen girls will like better, because they want what she has. She has the name brand clothes, the cute car, the hockey guys all over her. They will want to be her. As adults... we will like the other girl better because we will sympathize more with her... she's had to fight and claw her way up and is determined. As adults, we know she has more character. I didn't make the rich girl a bitch and have the poor girl be the good one. That's cliche. They can both be bitches, but they both have good things about them too. They have a visceral reaction to one another that leads them to see the same events from very different viewpoints. So that is my delimma. Sigh. I just have to find a way to get that across early. Okay, enough complaining... I will just have to find a way to make the rich girl more sympathetic... Or maybe just understand her motivations better.