Writing Activity, December 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 (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 genderqueer bisexual 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.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Had the eight poems I sent to Frogpond last month rejected.

4. Had my poem “sunrise / on the escalator / a delivery bike,” which was published in the October issue of Kingfisher, nominated for a 2023 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award.

5. Had my novella manuscript rejected by a press.

6. Recorded a podcast interview with New Books Network about my new book.

7. Submitted a commissioned essay on Maxwell Kennel’s Ontologies of Violence: Deconstruction, Pacifism, and Displacement to a journal.