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Staying Creative While Waiting on the World to Change
I believe the sheltering in place edict has made me a more productive, if not a more creative, writer. Maynard Eaton, a fellow journalist, remarked to me the other day that I have been very productive and innovative in the past few weeks. It dawns on me that he is right. I have cranked out an article a day for the past sixteen days.
When I started on this roll, I kept a daily diary on the pandemic, and then it hit me that the more one beats the drum about something, wanted or unwanted, the more it magnifies in its reality. I stopped the daily diary and searched for more creative ways to explain the times we live. For instance, I wrote a piece about celebrating the homegoing of a civil rights warrior — Rev. Joseph E. Lowery — in a pandemic.
The only reference to the pandemic was in the title. The article focused on my relationship with Lowery from my days as a 27-year- old journalist to a 45-year-old lawyer helping to protect the rights of college students facing disorderly conduct charges during a spring break festival in the mid-1990s. I shared the lessons I learned first-hand from the dean of the civil rights movement.
