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 (which were especially terrible this month), 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 an oppressed 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 busy month!
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
3. Submitted eight poems to Frogpond.
4. Submitted my memoir to a publisher.
5. Had my memoir reach another publisher’s final judging round, but then ultimately get rejected.
6. Had a poem accepted by Modern Haiku for their next issue.
7. Submitted the ekphrastic poem for an anthology of artwork celebrating Anabaptism’s 500th anniversary in 2025 that I was commissioned to write last month to the editor.
8. Interviewed Casey Plett about her new book, On Community, at an event at McNally Jackson Seaport.
9. Had a poem published in the Haiku Society of America’s 2023 members’ anthology.
10. Had my second book, Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature, published by Penn State University Press.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
One thought on “Writing Activity, November 2023”