Sonja Foust

So I actually sent a letter to the North Carolina governor, Bev Perdue, a few weeks ago about budget cuts for community and technical colleges in our state. I sent it January 29 at 7:20 p.m. via her website.

Wednesday morning (February 25), I got the following email:

Dear Ms. Foust:

Thank you for contacting Governor Perdue with your correspondence regarding public education in North Carolina. This is to notify you that your message has been received and is being processed so we can provide you timely and informative assistance. You should receive further information related to your inquiry shortly.

Sincerely,

Governor’s Education Office

Um… I think it’s a little late for timely assistance. Don’t you? Then again, maybe her office is just really backlogged. So which of you has the inside scoop? What’s going on over there at the gov’s place?

Stop by eCataromance.com today to see my article on how I got hooked on romance. Thanks!

Happy Friday! And how could this day be anything but great when I pulled up behind this first thing this morning? Have a nice day!

A slightly panicked coworker told me yesterday, “I’m not a writer!” He was working on an article for our company newsletter and was a little worried, I think.

So, first, a little pep-talk: Everyone is a writer! Yes, even you. Think about it. Do you write emails? Letters? A journal? Notes to yourself? Chances are, you write at least one of those things, and you pretty much can’t get away with not writing if you are in the corporate world. So, yes, you are a writer.

If you’re feeling a little nervous about your writing chops, though, let me give you a few tips:

1. Write conversationally. If you wouldn’t use a word when you are speaking to a colleague, you shouldn’t use the word when you are writing, either. That seems pretty simple, but I’ve seen many documents with overblown and incorrectly used vocabulary. It does not make you look smarter to use a big, fancy word, especially if you use it the wrong way.

2. Write what you know. This is a rule even for people who call themselves writers. It’s much easier to write, say, an article on something you know a lot about than something with which you are completely unfamiliar. If you’ve been asked to write about something you don’t know about, do a lot of research before you begin.

3. Outline. I sometimes even outline emails, if they are important and/or complex. (Normally, I would recommend against sending complex ideas through email, but that’s another subject entirely.) Outlining gives you a structure and a goal, and once you have the outline, all you have to do is fill in the prose.

4. Don’t feel locked into prose, either. In the modern age of instant gratification, sometimes a few bullet points will serve as well or better than a paragraph of prose.

5. Get some proofing help. Use the Word spelling and grammar checker. It’s so easy, and yet so helpful. For help from an actual person, think about who sends out nicely done emails, who writes concise reports, who is asked consistently to help with writing projects… and make friends with that person. Chances are, they’ll be flattered if you ask them to proof-read the occassional important document before you send it on up to your boss. Heck, I’ve sometimes asked my husband to proof-read an important email or slide presentation. Even if you don’t get any feedback, it will give you confidence that your writing is ready for the big time.

6. Don’t worry! In all liklihood, you are your harshest critic, and sometimes you just have to let it go. Do the best you can, present the most professional document you can, but know that no one is perfect and, therefore, no writing is perfect either.

Do you have any other writing tips for a non-writer? Please share them in the comments!

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I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten.” Well, everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten from my mother.

First, I obtained a basic understanding of why the world is the way it is, and a model of the greatest patience.

“Mom, why are apples red? Why are they called apples? Who invented apples? Can I have an apple? With peanut butter? And no peel?”

Apparently the easiest way to get someone to stop asking you questions is to give them something to eat, and I’ve used this technique many times on my husband and my dog. They think I’m really smart.

Mom also gave me a propensity for snide remarks during touching love scenes in the movies. I’m pretty sure I’m the only kindergartner who went, “Ew, I bet she has morning breath,” when Prince Charming kissed Sleeping Beauty.

She instilled in me an urgent sense of punctuality. One day when our school bus began rolling down an ice-covered hill backwards toward a sheer drop-off, all the other kids cried because they thought they were going to die. I cried because I thought I’d be late for school.

The most important lesson by far that my mom taught me in kindergarten was about love.

Every kindergarten class has several archetypes: the boy who eats anything (rocks, finger paste, worms, toilet paper, whatever), the girl who is always the mom when it’s time to play house, and the bully.

The bully of our kindergarten class was, in hindsight, mostly considered the bully because he was big—really, really big. He towered over the rest of us, and I think some of the teachers were even afraid of him. When we played jump rope, it got caught around his neck. He didn’t have to climb up at all to touch the top of the jungle gym. At snack time, the volunteering moms always gave him an extra helping because he was a “growing boy.” The rest of us prayed he was done growing and we’d eventually catch up. We were terrified of him.

One day at recess some kids decided to divide into teams. We didn’t have much of a plan of what these teams would do, except that one team would be Good and one team would be Bad. I immediately nominated myself for the Good team. After all, I could spell lots of four-letter words (not that kind) and had never had to sit out for recess.

The kids that were sitting out for recess were automatically on the Bad team, mostly because they weren’t there to defend themselves. We picked a few other bad apples and, of course, the bully.

To our surprise, the hulking, evil, horrible bully burst into tears and ran off to hang out with the kid who’d decided to eat as many ivy leaves as possible before the bell rang.

“Is he sad because we don’t like him?” I wondered aloud.

“Pfft,” scoffed the girl who was always the mom when we played house, fluffing her curly hair. “You don’t have to like everyone.”

That nagged at me for the rest of the morning, and when I got home I asked my mom about it.

“Mom, do you have to like everyone?”

She set a plate of peeled apples with peanut butter in front of me, probably hoping I’d start eating and forget what I’d asked, but I was not to be deterred. I waited for her answer, refusing to touch the delectable snack.

“Well, no, I don’t suppose you do,” she said finally, probably thinking about the lady at church who always volunteered to head up all the potlucks and then complained the whole time about it. “But you do have to love everyone,” she added.

My five year old brain took the afternoon to work that out, between rounds of playing dolls with my sister and rounds of hollering at my brothers to stop acting like babies… even if they were both still in diapers.

Finally, I decided that Mom was probably right. After all, I loved my brothers. I wasn’t sure I much liked them. They weren’t very fun to play with, and they made big messes and took a lot of attention. But I knew I loved them.

The next day at school, I told the girl who was always the mom when we played house that my mom had said she was wrong.

“She says you don’t have to like everyone, but you do have to love everyone,” I informed her, attempting to fluff my not-curly-at-all hair.

“That’s backwards,” she said, and then beat her pretend husband with a pink plastic spatula for dropping the baby on its head.

My attention span hadn’t developed enough for me to have a philosophical argument with her, and plus I didn’t want to get beaten with a spatula, so I went and played with the blocks instead. I knew Mom was right about the love thing, though, especially when I was the only kid who didn’t run away when the bully came over to play blocks too.

He turned out to be a decent kid. He didn’t throw things or pick his nose and he could spell five-letter words. Because I was willing to love him, I ended up liking him too.

Over the years there have been a lot of way more difficult people I’ve had to love in spite of disliking them quite a lot—the kind of people who are evil in ways far beyond throwing things and picking their noses. Most of the time it’s not easy, and a lot of times they have no redeeming qualities that I can see, except maybe their propensity for four-letter words (yes, that kind). But I have never felt bad or wrong for trying to love someone, and sometimes it does work just like in kindergarten—I find a friend where I might not have seen one before.

So, like I said: Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten… from my mother.

Happy birthday, Mom!