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. Submitted ten poems to Kingfisher and had two accepted.
4. Finished writing and submitted a poem to a forthcoming special journal issue on “apocalypse” that I received an invitation to take part in.
5. Had two poems published in Blithe Spirit 35, no. 3 (August 2025): “a friend’s hospital selfie the moon photobombs it” (thankfully the friend who inspired this poem is out of the hospital) and “sun shower the sidewalk’s patchwork drying.”
6. Submitted fifteen poems to Acorn and had one accepted.
7. Had two of the poems I submitted to Frogpond last month accepted.
8. Helped send acceptance and rejection emails in my role as Frogpond‘s haiku/senryu co-editor.
9. Had all three of the AWP 2026 panel proposals I was a part of rejected.
10. Found out which one of the four poems I submitted to the Haiku North America conference anthology will be included.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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