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 (WHICH ARE ESPECIALLY TERRIBLE IN THE U.S. RIGHT NOW–make no mistake, the current “presidential” administration is a fascist one), so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.
Writing-wise, this month was up and down, but encouraging overall. The list is basically in chronological order.
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Submitted fifteen poems to Acorn and had one accepted.
3. Submitted five poems to whiptail and had them all rejected.
4. Applied to (this began last month) and was named one of Frogpond‘s haiku and senryu editors.
5. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
6. Had an interview about my book Ethics for Apocalyptic Times published in the Journal of Mennonite Writing. (This interview actually came out at the end of December, but I did not hear that it was out until early January.)
7. Submitted eight poems to seashores.
8. Had my novella manuscript rejected by a publisher.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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