Writing Activity, May 2024

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 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.

I had a week-and-a-half off from work at the end of the month, which helped me to get more accomplished than some months. The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Submitted eight poems to #FemkuMag and had three accepted.

4. Submitted my novella to a contest.

5. Had my novella rejected by a different contest.

6. Had my memoir rejected by a publisher.

7. Received my author’s copies of It Breaks Your Heart: Haiku and Senryu on the 2023 New York Mets. The book has a very limited print run, but you can read the ebook for free here.

8. Had an essay I submitted to a journal rejected for their print issue, but they asked me to submit a condensed version for consideration for their website (which I haven’t had time to do yet).

9. Peer-reviewed an article for a journal in one of my areas.

10. Began taking an online poetry workshop, Poetics of Resistance, and had my first piece workshopped.

11. Completed another round of revisions on my memoir.

12. Had four poems published in an anthology, Petals of Haiku.