the interview

Everyone in town knows Doug Moe. A columnist at the Wisconsin State Journal and before that at the Capital Times, he is widely read and much adored.

So of course, when he sent me an email asking if I wanted to chat about my new book, I said sure! Who would say no to a line or two from the pen of Doug Moe?

The key thing I retained from my days of talking to the press (when I worked as an attorney at the Center for Public Representation – a nonprofit advocacy organization) is that you keep your sentences short and you leave the reporter with soundbites. Everything else is irrelevant.

I prepared a two page outline of points about me, the blog, and the book. Keep the man focused on the benign, the lovely, the immaterial.

Doug sat at the Panera booth, waiting. Pad on table, pen ready.




He glanced over my outline, smiled, and went to his own questions.

Before I knew it, an hour had passed and I experienced what one must feel after a very successful visit to a therapist – all truths out on the table, the soul expunged, the stories duly noted.

Wait a minute: did I really just tell him about the fact that I’m scared of lightening and that my occasional travel companion, Ed, lives in a sheep shed? Did I describe to him how I got my job as a nanny in America? Did I admit that I am a terrible entrepreneur? And did I reveal my deep secret that way back when, I imagined myself to someday be a journalist?

Good grief.

Read all about it. In our Sunday paper.