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. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
3. Read approximately 2,100 poems in my role as one of Frogpond‘s haiku/senryu co-editors.
4. Got invited to submit a piece to a forthcoming special journal issue on “apocalypse” and accepted the invitation.
5. Found out which one of my poems will be included in the 2025 Haiku Society of America’s members’ anthology.
6. Had one of the poems I submitted to Modern Haiku last month accepted.
7. Had a poem, “rain against the window the sound of society collapsing,” and a book review published in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Frogpond.
8. Submitted nine poems to Frogpond.
9. and 10. Had seven poems published as the “Femku Feature” in the Summer 2025 issue of #FemkuMag, along with a positive review of my book a good possible year for an apocalypse.
11. Had the paperback of my book Ethics for Apocalyptic Times come out.
12. Submitted five poems to The Haiku Foundation Haiku of the Day and had one accepted that will come out in the fall.
13. Wrote and submitted a book review of Roberta Beary’s Crazy Bitches, which is a fantastic collection of haibun.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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