Writing Activity, October 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.

The list is basically in chronological order. It was a very successful month! I had five poems and two essays published and three more poems accepted for future publication. It’s lovely to have times like this every once in a while when all of the hard work of writing pays off in tangible form.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Had three of the eight poems I submitted to #FemkuMag last month accepted.

4. Had my memoir rejected by a publisher.

5. Submitted commentaries about the poetry of three of my fellow confluence fellows and had the first one, on Rowan Beckett Minor, published.

6. Had two poems published in Modern Haiku 55, no. 3, including my first published haibun.

7. Had a positive review of my co-written book It Breaks Your Heart published in Modern Haiku.

8. Had a poem published in Acorn 53.

9. Had an essay on Diane di Prima’s haiku published in Frogpond 47, no. 3.

10. Began working on putting together a book manuscript of my haiku/senryu.

11. Submitted my memoir to another publisher.

12. Had two poems published in Kingfisher 10.