The Foreign Service Journal, May 2015

52 MAY 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL RETIREE VP VOICE | BY LARRY COHEN AFSA NEWS Life After the Foreign Service: It’s All Write Views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the AFSA Retiree VP. Contact: lawrencecohenassociates@hotmail.com or (703) 437-7881 From where does this lan- guage come? “To write concise, well organized, grammatically cor- rect, effective and persuasive English in a limited amount of time.” If you said it is one of the 13 dimensions the Department of State Board of Examiners uses in its Foreign Service Oral Assessment checklist, you would be correct. For Foreign Service candidates, at least, the ability to write well is per- ceived as essential. I’ll go out on a limb. Com- pared to the U.S. population at large, Foreign Service retirees tend to be good writers. Over our Foreign Service careers many of us wrote and edited prodigiously.Written com- munication skills were vital. In general, Foreign Service retirees still possess the writ- ing bug. According to the Career Transition Center, the “Writing after Retirement” panel is one of the Job Search Program’s most popular offerings. Panel- ists speak to such topics as fiction/non-fiction writing, strengthening writing skills, getting published, grant proposal writing and blogging. Post-Foreign Service writ- ing opportunities are more diverse and less constraining than, say, the country human rights report or mission pro- gram plan. Plus, as a retiree you may now possess two ingredients possibly missing before: motivation and time. Post-retirement writing comes in many forms. In his February 2010 Foreign Service Journal article,“Writing As a Second Career,”David T. Jones highlighted writing opportuni- ties within the State Depart- ment—includingWhen Actu- ally Employed work. David cites community and profes- sional association newslet- ters as examples of impact writing: Write about what you know, what you care about. As David notes,“it doesn’t have to be a book,” although since retirement he has written four of them. Hobbies and research interests offer plenty of opportunities to contribute to periodicals. Since retirement, I have written four cover stories for the American Philatelist. And as many of you know, retired FSOs already craft a substantial share of the content in each issue of The Foreign Service Journal. Back to books. If you’re a Civil War history buff, look to former FSOs Steve Muller and Gene Schmiel for inspiration. Steve recently wrote Troy, New York, and the Building of the USS Monitor and Gene wrote Citizen General: Jacob Dolson Cox and the Civil War Era. Or how about Civil War fiction? Try Chris Datta’s meticu- lously researched slave story Touched with Fire . Put a book out there on virtually any subject and you can be featured in the FSJ ’s annual book roundup issue, “In Their OwnWrite,” and can be invited to sell your book at the annual AFSA Book Market. For those interested in memoir writing, consider the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training oral history program. More than 1,800 of your colleagues already have. The transcript ADST creates can be crafted into a memoir or autobiography. And it gets published online: www.adst.org/oral-history. Books and journal articles seem overwhelming? Take your writing skills elsewhere. A local issue needs to be addressed?Write a letter to your local newspaper, your mayor or county representa- tive. Upset with some stupid- ity in Richmond, Annapolis or Tallahassee, or on Capitol Hill? Don’t hold it in; advocate! And while you’re at it, write your legislators to support the professional, active-duty Foreign Service. n AFSA Creates Online Memorial Tribute Page The American Foreign Service Association has created an online memorial page as a way to honor col- leagues who have passed away. The online AFSA Memorial Tribute will offer a place to honor all Foreign Service members—those who died while on active duty as well as those who died after retire- ment—and to recognize their service, regardless of the circumstances of their deaths. The names of nearly 2,000 Foreign Service members (active-duty and retired) have already been included on the AFSAMemorial Tribute site. We now encourage you to share your memories and stories of your FS col- leagues, family members and friends, and join us in honoring and remembering those who served in the U.S. Foreign Ser- vice. Biographical information and pic- tures of deceased colleagues can be submitted by sending informa- tion to member@afsa.org with the subject line Online AFSA Memorial Tribute. To visit the online AFSA Memorial Tribute site please go to: www.afsa.org/tribute. Note: To log in for the first time, use your primary email address and your last name in all lowercase letters for the password. Please be sure to update your address and other contact information as needed. If you have questions, please email member@afsa. org. n