September 28, 2006

  • A Room of My Own ...

    KNOX:    Who are you?
    BRUCE:   Oh... Bruce Wayne.
    KNOX:    (extending a hand) Alexander Knox.
    BRUCE:   (genuine) I read (present tense) 
                 your work. I like it.
    KNOX:    Great.  Give me a grant.

    I'm applying for a grant.  Mary sent me the link, and I dithered around about it for several days, but I ordered copies of the tax returns necessary for the application and received them yesterday.  So it looks like I'm really doing this. 

    Virginia Woolf said that in order to write a woman must have money and a room of her own.  I want to write.  I want to finish a novel and submit it for publication.  I want to tell my stories.  Not my personal history, but the stories that can only come from my mind and my heart.  I want to share characters and situations, choices and human experience.  But you know what?  Mostly I just want to tell a good story. 

    I know it's not just women. You have to know that there is money to pay for necessities.  You have to have an opportunity to follow through on what Chris Baty calls "Butt in Chair Time".  I have the ideas.  I have the outlines.  I have the postcards ... LOL. 

    What I don't have right now is time, or money to buy time.  Chris Baty has also been known to produce 10,000 words in a day on Saturdays to make up for lack of time during the week, but I don't seem able to do that.  I've come close a couple times, but my weekends are not free either.  My kids have certain expectations that I will feed them, and generally be their mom.  Reasonable expectations. 

    SO what to do?  Well, if I were a little more disciplined, I could probably drag my sorry self out of bed at 4:00 and write every morning.  But my sorry self likes to sleep.  There's no point in pretending that I coudl do it at night, my brain is just fried by the time I'm done with the dinner dishes.  I refuse to neglect my Momi dutues.  And well, there's that need to eat that sends me off to work every day.  (Although, my pantry is pretty well stocked.    My friend Laura says that someone needs to go grocery shopping with me to "just say no" because no one needs that many varieties of tea, or jello.)

    So okay, the food thing is mostly a metaphor. 

    but still ...

    Up to this point my choices have been limited.  Either I can work and pay my bills or I can write.  But to reach the end of the project, I can't seem to find a way to do both.  So I'm applying for this grant.  And I'm looking around.  If I'm applying for one grant I might as well apply for others. 

    PS.  Anyone have experience with grants who could tell me whether it's acceptable to say "I'd like to use this money to take off six months and not be evicted from my home?"

Comments (11)

  • I don't have experience with grants but I sure hope you get one...or two!

  • If you don't apply, you'll never get one. I know that much.

    Also, there's usually something that you have to deliver as the product of the grant. I do believe that a few of Annie Proulx's novels were done this way.

  • I wish I could do that.  Good luck!

  • I got a grant to finish a short film. It's probably best NOT to word it exactly that way. They generally want to you to include a budget of sorts, and food and lodging can be included in that. I was surprised, once I got started, how easy it was to write the proposal and how easy it was to appear impassioned about various things like social injustice, morality, women's rights and so on - none of which had anything to do with my film or why I was doing it. In other words, lying is acceptable. Not really, but if you look deeper into your work you can come up with levels that result from "just telling a story" even if you don't initially intend those levels to be there.

    SteveJ is right; they do usually expect you to finish something and show it to them. Taking the money and then not following through is pretty much considered a no-no. You'd be surprised, however, how many organizations and foundations exist that really want to give you money, so write those grants! It's worth the trouble.

    Good luck.

  • I see absolutly no reason why you can not do both. Work and wirte. I work 14 hour days, keep 6 websites and produce several ebooks a year as well as lately, podcasts.

    Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

    CARPE DIEM

  • just out of curiosity is dreadpirate a parent and/or does he have a wife?? Not trying to be antagonistic! :) But, you know, young children in the house do create certain demands that cannot be ignored. At least with a clear conscience...

    That said, I am also trying to do all THREE things, as you know... work for $$, write, and mother. Applying for grants is a great thing! And one of the things that academia actually prepared me for - begging for money and trying to convince someone that your project is doable and WORTH doing! That said, you CAN and should say that the grant money would be used to provide a "sabbatical" from your regular paid employment and, as your other commentator said, provide a budget for food, lodging, child care... whatever is needed for your to survive and write during that period.

  • Thanks for coming by and leaving a most gracious comment! I'm afraid I have no grant information, I wish you the best of luck!

  • Umm...wow...dreadpirate is not a single mother...is he?    I sure hope I don't have to walk the plant for THAT one! 

    Any who.....yes, thank God for Little Girl...my living angel. 

  • Opps....I mean....walk the PLANK!  I was so nervous typing that...'cause no one likes to get on the bad side of a pirate, now do they? 

  • Then on the other hand there once was a woman who wanted to write, she was on wellfair and wrote in a coffee shop. Some how she came up with a silly story about a silly little boy by the name of "HARRY  POTTER" and now could buy all of England. I perfer the guidence of the universe over a room.

    Sorry about my delay. A freind of mine saw me unwrape your book and grabed it and said could she borrow it. So I say NO !  Have it back and will now read it and send comment.  Man who writes checks has been out, will b-here mon, so it should be N-the mail then.  thanks 4-all    lol   P.N.

  • I hope you have good luck with your grant! MAybe I will look into that for after I graduate college or something. Especially since I keep teeter tottering between grad school and a career and I can't seem to decide what I want to do. Getting a grant would help give me even more time to put off my "real" life. I think it's encouraging that you still take care of your kids first, it seems now that so many parents do the exact opposite and become borderline neglegent. I don't have kids or any responsiblity demands but I was having trouble finding time to write and that's why I've started posting my writing on Xanga. Cause no matter how busy I was most of the time I would stop by and write a line or check my subs. So I took that time (because no one really wants read blah blah blah) and used it creatively. I always have a thousand lines of prose running around in my head, I can spend 5 minutes writing it on a blog, get comments/criticsm on it and go back to sleep or back to homework. Anyway that's just a suggestion but like I said what fo I know bout 'real' life and 'real' responsiblities?

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