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. Submitted three poems to the 2025 Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology.
3. Had a poem, “freezing night / a streetlight / dying,” published in Acorn 54 (Spring 2025).
4. Had a poem I submitted last month accepted by Frogpond.
5. Had my haiku collection manuscript accepted by a publisher!
6. Had four co-written poems published in confluence‘s “Community” special issue of collaborative pieces.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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