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. Found out which poem I had submitted to the 2026 British Haiku Society members’ anthology last month got accepted.
2. Had a poem, “morning train everyone’s fast fashion,” published in Trash Panda 10 (Winter 2026).
3. Submitted eleven poems to Modern Haiku and had one accepted.
4. Attended the 2026 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Baltimore. It felt really good to be in community with other writer weirdos during these terrible times.
5. Had a poem, “shoestring fries another tariff,” published in Modern Haiku 57, no. 1 (Winter-Spring 2026).
6. Read a bunch of poems during Frogpond‘s March submission window in my role as one of the journal’s haiku/senryu co-editors.
7. Submitted a poem to confluence‘s 2026 poetry prize contest.
8. Submitted eight poems to Frogpond.
9. Submitted eight poems to Blithe Spirit and had one accepted.
10. Wrote and submitted a commissioned book review to Frogpond.
Daniel Shank Cruz 