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.
The list is basically in chronological order.
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Submitted ten poems to Kingfisher and had two accepted.
3. Submitted ten poems to Haiku Canada Review.
4. Had a negative review of Ethics for Apocalyptic Times published in Mennonite Life.
5. Had the eight poems I submitted to Frogpond in July rejected.
6. Had two poems published in Blithe Spirit 34, no. 3 (August 2024): “trekking north ant crawling on my cast” and “day moon the drone of a lawnmower.”
7. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
8. Had my fellowship application to confluence accepted. They will published an issue of twenty-five of my poems alongside commentary on the poems by two or three other fellows. The issue is scheduled for February 2025.
9. Was asked for and granted my permission to have my 2017 essay, “On Postcolonial Mennonite Writing,” included in a forthcoming anthology of Mennonite literary criticism.
10. Found out that my novella manuscript was not accepted by a contest I submitted it to several months ago.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
One thought on “Writing Activity, August 2024”