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.
The list is basically in chronological order.
1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.
2. Began working on my first issue as a haiku/senryu co-editor for Frogpond.
3. Submitted twelve poems to Blithe Spirit and had two accepted.
4. Submitted fifteen poems to Modern Haiku and had one accepted.
5. Wrote and submitted a book review to a journal.
6. Had a poem, “Thinking About the Book of Esther, October 2023: A Senryu Sequence,” published in Drawing Near: A Devotional Journey with Art, Poetry, and Reflection, edited by Eileen Kinch and John D. Roth, which is an anthology published as part of the global celebrations of Anabaptism’s five hundredth anniversary this year.
7. Submitted a haiku collection book proposal to a publisher.
8. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibiographies.
9. Had my memoir manuscript rejected by a publisher.
10. Submitted nine poems to Frogpond.
11. Had my essay “Commentary from Fellows: Vandana Parashar” published in confluence 8.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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