Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself–to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of the pandemic (Which is still going on! Keep wearing masks!)–and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.
I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a queer disabled writer of color because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of a marginalized group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.
The list is basically in chronological order.
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies website.
3. Worked on various assignments for my MFA coursework and had my writing workshopped for the second time, which was helpful.
4. Submitted 14 poems to Modern Haiku and had one accepted for their next issue.
5. Submitted 10 poems to Frogpond–still waiting to hear back.
6. Had a haiku published in the October 2021 issue of Kingfisher, which arrived in November: “brownout weather / the bodega / out of milk”
7. Had an essay that was written pre-pandemic and then delayed because of the pandemic finally come out: “‘We change–and the whole world changes’: Samuel R. Delany’s Heavenly Breakfast in Context.” In Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, 64-69. Oakland: PM Press, 2021.
9. Submitted a chapbook of haiku and senryu to a contest.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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