An (Inadvertent) Easter Lesson In Creative Writing For Anyone

As of Easter Sunday, 04 April 2021, as a creative writer who started publishing himself, in print in 1975, or 55 years ago, and in digital media in 2000, or 20 years ago, I have blogged digitally alone about 7,000 essays – long, up to 7,000 words; and short, exactly 517 words, including title. Extra creative!

My very last essay, which I blogged Sunday, “2 Leadership Lessons From Apayao Women – Help Yourself By Helping Others[1]” (Asa Ka Pa!), is most original and extraordinary – so far, it’s my best! But it started in my head nothing like that.

Lesson: Your best is still to come. There’s hope!

In the top image, Akin Olokun says, “People come into your life and go, but you will always have to live with yourself. Make yourself pleasant, positive, and peaceful.” The bottom image says, “The great gift of Easter is Hope” – Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, who “presided over one of the most turbulent periods of Catholicism in Britain[2].” The great British poet Alexander Pope says, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Unless of course you have forgotten to be human!

Early Sunday morning, out there in a neighboring field getting my 15-minute of fresh air, with grasses growing and trees showing, it dawned on me that while my Easter essay is a surprise lesson on Filipino women and leadership, it is also a surprise lesson in writing, whether you call it creative or not.

In my case, believe it or not, when I came across the original news-story by Kathleen Faye B Agonoy titled “Rural Women-Led Communal Gardening In Celebration Of National Women’s Month[3]” (29 March 2021, SAAD.da.gov.ph), I read it with a pleasant, positive, and peaceful mind – with extra hope that something new & wonderful will come out – and it did! If before reading I had judged it according to my high writing standards, I would not have known what I was missing: Inspiration.

Being hopeful, pleasant, positive and peaceful in reading Miss Kathleen’s news surprised me and told me, if quietly, that there were some untold lessons in leadership in there that needed to be told, and I was the one to tell them. (You have to read my essay and that of Miss Kathleen’s to fully appreciate what I’m saying here.)

So, if you are a columnist, journalist, preacher, speaker, student, or teacher, the lesson for you to come up with some original thoughts that will surprise even you is to assume a hopeful, pleasant, positive, and peaceful attitude when reading anything, whether intended as your source material or not. You never know what will come out of that!

No, I was not thinking of learning or giving leadership lessons when I was reading Miss Kathleen's story, even if the title suggested it: “Rural Women-Led Communal Gardening…..”

But that’s exactly the point: When you leave your mind open to all possibilities, creativity creeps in! You just have to have some experience to recognize your own genius when it shows up in your thoughts!@517


[1]https://asakaparin.blogspot.com/2021/04/2-leadership-lessons-from-apayao-women.html

[2]https://biography.yourdictionary.com/basil-hume

[3]http://saad.da.gov.ph/2021/03/rural-women-led-communal-gardening-in-celebration-of-national-womens-month/?fbclid=IwAR3S2wSH-q7IJFlKBziZsbJcfid6QsPbknFD2sHDW4p-61-of1-Vbriq6Ok

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