Applying for Writers' Grants: Tips and Advice

Finding grants is only the first charge in your battle for funding. If you've found even one to apply to, congratulations! Now you have the opportunity to pit your talents against all your fellow artists who found this grant too.

Good luck, because here comes the hard part.

Competing for a grant puts your writing, and your writing career, under close scrutiny: make sure it first passes muster with yourself, before you lick the stamps. Are you sure you're sending your best work? How strong is your commitment to completing your proposal (whether novel, or poetry chapbook, or commissioned play)? Does your work contribute to the grantmaker's mission? Does it really?

You can hope (as I always do) that your competition will all disqualify themselves somehow, or will strike a lottery jackpot or inheritance instead, or will miss the deadline, or that their applications will become lost in the mail. In the very likely event that none of those happen (or happen only to a few), insure your own application against its competition by following this advice, which I've gathered from grant-makers and grant-earners over the years:

Double-check your eligibility
Many grants are limited to a specific group of people. Citizenship or residency of a particular country may be required, or the grant may be only for unpublished writers...or only for professional ones. Double-check the rules, read the terms and conditions, and if you don't meet their criteria, don't waste your time--and theirs--with an application.

Follow the rules
Seems obvious, doesn't it? Well, it IS obvious. At one grantwriters' workshop I attended several years ago, one such panel member had recorded over half the received applications as disqualified that year: everything from exceeding page limits to not double-spacing, to failing to enclose necessary documentation.

Submit on time
That sounds obvious too, doesn't it? Give yourself plenty of time to work on the application beforehand--don't download the application the morning it's due. Send it well in advance of the deadline to be sure it arrives on time, giving it at least a few spare days. If you're writing fiction, you know all about worst-case scenarios and plot complications: don't forget that real life has complications too. Punctured tyres on the way to the post office, a postal strike, your kids' juice box spilled across the application...it happens.

Right: so you've got the technicalities out of the way, and you're still in the running. Easy-peasy...and you've already left a few fellow-contenders in your dust. Now your application can safely land on the conference room table or boardmember's desk to stand its chance with the rest. How will yours fare? Here's where the task gets harder:

Send only your BEST
Again, that should have been obvious. But your favourite writing sample or opening chapter might not be your BEST one. Run it past your critique group, a professional editor, or at least a few friends for feedback. If it hasn't been through several re-reads, revisions or polishing, it's not ready. Be sure you're sending your BEST.

Send ONLY your best
Applications sometimes ask for 'a writing sample', or 'two or three published clips', or similar language. Give them what they ask for ... no more, no less. Again, make sure those are your best.

What's so great about you?
Seriously, I'm asking you. That greatness is what can lift you above the crowd. Don't just tell the judges about it: show them work that's original or powerful in idea, or in its expression. If you've found your 'voice', let it shine. If you're funny, make them wet their pants laughing. Something makes you and writing a special mix: find it, hone it, then send it.

So now your work's chosen, polished, and printed. When it comes to filling in the form with personal details and information however, are you putting your best foot forward?

Demonstrate your commitment
Most applications will require a letter or written paragraph about your project and/or yourself. Show the panel you're committed to your writing, and to the project you've asked to be funded. Show, don't tell (you've heard that before?) with specifics: perhaps you've quit your job to write full-time; perhaps you're under contract to an agent already; perhaps you've had six stories published this year in respected journals; perhaps you're booked in for three intensive workshops this year. Why should an Arts Office commit funds to your project, if you haven't commited to it?

Show your support
I don't mean the support you give, I mean the support you (and your writing) get. Do you belong to a critique group? Did your last work receive good reviews? Have you been awarded other partial funding for this project?

What can you offer?
You've got a goal, and that's to get funding. Do you know what the grantmaker's goal is? Read the brochure or website and find the mission statement, or the 'About Us' page. Read it carefully, and note what the foundation or agency's aims are. For instance, if it was founded to promote artists with disability, then let them know how YOU promote yourself as an artist with disability: do you blog? present at seminars? tour art festivals? If their aim is to introduce new people to the art form, then let them know how YOUR project will introduce new people to it: will you be sharing it with young people? Does it 'cross over' demographics or genre? Make it clear to judges that their goals are your goals too.

Mind your details
You may be asked to provide a project budget, especially for the larger grants. Say you're asking for funding to attend a Magical-Realism-Mystery Writers' Conference in Finland: how should you present your budget?

Workshop Fee ............... $1200
Other Expenses.............. $2800

No, no, no, no, no, NO. If my kid asked me for $4000 to run off to Finland, I'd want to be sure she had a budget for it--a real budget, if only to give me confidence she knew what she was doing.
So:

Workshop Fee ............................ $1200
RT flight on Finnair ..................... $ 800
Passport renewal + visa ............... $ 200
Four nights at Helsinki Hilton..........$ 400
Workshop materials ......................$ 100
Meals ......................................... $ 400
Transportation ..............................$ 800
Communication charges ................$100

Better still: list how much you're contributing to the project from your own savings or income. Remember that commitment paragraph?

Check, re-check, double-check
When it's all finished, pour yourself a glass of champagne and drop off your application...into a drawer. NOT the post box, not yet. Put it in a drawer for a week, a few days at least, so that you can give an eagle-eyed once-over before sending it off. Then, read it slowly, no distractions, word by word. You might be amazed at the things you missed or overlooked in the rules; you might find a few typos in your writing sample; you might be aghast at your writing sample.

Go over it all again, fine-tooth combing it, then pass it off to a partner or friend for a second opinion. THEN send it. Send it on time, of course. And, send it to the right person, to the right address. With the right postage attached. You're double-checking these details, right?

Now, all you have to do is wait.

That's the really hard part, by the way.



As always, if you've got tips or have learned something valuable from this process, please pass them on in the comments section. I'll be posting an 'after-the-application' bit in a few days: thanks for all the comments and e-mailed questions so far!