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. It was a good writing month!
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
3. Read a personal essay at a reading at Bird in Hand bar with some of my MFA classmates.
4. Submitted a personal essay to a journal and had it accepted.
5. Peer reviewed three articles for a journal in one of my fields.
6. Had the ten poems I sent to Frogpond last month rejected.
7. Signed a contract for my next book, a hybrid of literary criticism and memoir tentatively titled Getting the News: Theapoetic Ethics for Apocalyptic Times, with Penn State University Press. The book should be out by mid-2024.
8. Submitted a presentation proposal to a haiku conference.
9. Submitted another personal essay to a journal.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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