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. Submitted fifteen poems to Mariposa.
2. Submitted ten poems to Kingfisher and had one accepted.
3. Submitted ten poems to Haiku Canada Review.
4. Received and accepted an invitation to contribute something to a festschrift for a writer who has been a significant influence on me, and began writing the piece.
5. Had three poems published in Sundog.
6. Added some entries to the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.
7. Had two poems published in Blithe Spirit.
8. Had a poem, “blackout sitting out to watch the stars,” published in Trash Panda 11 (Summer 2026).
9. Had a poem, “aperitifs / starlight flickering / off the Chesapeake,” published in Akitsu Quarterly Fall/Winter 2026.
10. Worked on three book reviews for Frogpond.
11. Had an essay, “On Ontologies of Violence,” published in Syndicate. This essay was written in 2023 as part of an essay cluster that for a while didn’t look like it was going to happen because the initial cluster editor dropped out, so it is nice to see the essay finally appear.
Daniel Shank Cruz 