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.A. 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 eight poems to #FemkuMag and had three accepted.
3. Submitted twelve poems to Blithe Spirit and had two accepted.
4. Submitted a good possible year for an apocalypse to the Lammys.
5. Attended my first Haiku North America conference, which was held in San Francisco. I took part in three readings, got lots of compliments on a good possible year for an apocalypse and sold eleven copies of it, bought a bunch of books, and got to meet lots of wonderful fellow poets in person.
6. Had a poem, “funeral flight / still moved / by the insides of clouds,” published in the conference’s anthology Nowhere Else: Haiku and Senryu Celebrating Haiku North America 2025.
Daniel Shank Cruz 
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