Writing Activity, June 2023

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 our times, 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 Latinx writer 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. Had a poem, “Groundhog Day another moving truck outside,” published in Modern Haiku 54, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 26.

3. Updated my website.

4. Submitted my memoir to two publishers.

5. Made a little progress on my novel.

6. Submitted a haiku chapbook to a publisher and had it rejected.

7. Submitted fifteen poems to Modern Haiku.

8. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

9. This is not writing activity per se, but it enables my writing activity financially: I began a job as Program Coordinator for Free Expression and Education at PEN America.