Funding Projects

Zach Wells in an open letter against project descriptions for funding applications says,

rather than keep a low profile to avoid attracting the Conservatives’ wrath, as I have heard several artists say we should do, I think this is the time to stand up and be counted, to be boldly unapologetic about our worth to society. A grant application may not seem the place or time to do this,

(lol)

A writer friend confided to me once that she did not think her project was working out, but that she felt obliged to follow through on it, having received a grant. She cannot be the only such conscientious soul to have felt this way and to have therefore wasted time and energy in the production of mediocre work. The Canada Council exists to support artists, not to influence the genre of art being produced.

Good point. I bet it does happen. I’ve never applied for a writing grant so I can’t speak personally on it. Some people seem to apply for writing grants and treat it the same as the old OSAP loans for university (nicknamed, what was it, Ontario Stereo Alcohol Plan?). Others diligently count it as a contract and divide it into hourly rate of how long the project pays.

Young writers, aware that they work in a competitive field, will naturally try to outdo their peers in crafting the most persuasive-sounding descriptions possible. This is why I had no insurmountable qualms about writing detailed, albeit somewhat fanciful, descriptions of my projects in previous applications, two of which have been successful. When going to a job interview, one shaves and puts on a tie; one doesn’t go as one’s slovenly self.
Once a writer has established something of a pedigree and amassed a basket of awards and credentials, however, it seems that past performance, along with a sample of recent writing, should be amply sufficient to judge their application’s merit.

So once one has proven one’s seriousness, can one rest on one’s laurels?
Hm, I can see the advantage of not spending time-is-money/ energy-is-money going thru the same hoops each time, and the frustration of losing time that could be used on poetry on the doing of paperwork, but if one were grandfathered in, would not some people just drift rather than be driven to keep up with the fresh crop of new ideas? A grant is to encourage exploring ideas and their implementation, not to reward past performance to give a steady income.
You get the money on spec in advance, don’t you? If one then comes out the process with something wildly different but hugely better than your first idea, who’d have a problem with that?
Jay O’Callahan in The Power of Storytelling at 99% Lectures talks in part about encouraging the start of stories. You praise. You reward. You nurture. You expect change, not final perfection at the start. You don’t say, well, it’s a fine enough human but the baby can’t walk can it? In time, it’ll find its legs.
It doesn’t need to be a matter of conflict with integrity, or any duplicitous, to write that one’s curiosity and preoccupation seems to be going this way and the expected outcomes are X and then for that to evolve.
Everyone in the creative process lives the same thing described — periods of high creativity and low, flux, starting from nothing, pivoting from what was explored before with no sure payoff around the corner. Does that mean one shouldn’t speculate on future? One makes plans as a way of developing and as further plans, and then those are thrown over as better options and clearer directions evolve.
If one rigidly adheres to a plan even when its not working, one is either disciplined and will succeed overcoming variances of moods and write oneself deeper into obsession and curiosity, or one will go thru the motions so it is finished but in name’s sake only and bland as the energy put into it.
The main problem is not the making of a proposed direction, to self or to a funding body, but what one does afterwards.
I agree that sometimes when one thinks narrowly of “a project” it can become overstretched material, repetitive, unadventurous, a hindrance rather than freeing, but that problem is more the editing and selection than the idea of a project that’s at fault. The narrowest of constraints can be lively in the right hands. Or the most creative of ideas and exciting of stories can be made dead-boring by another treatment.
Does pre-conceiving a project a too early of stage fatally wound any good idea? Does doing that compromise up front, at a damaging stage? Does knowing that you pitch a project on spec shape what you decide to think about — projecting what would please someone to give you money — and make for less compelling work? That might be a factor of limiting yourself by selling short what a committee would approve. Again, that stick to your plan or veer after bliss pattern comes into play.
Getting money for words is pretty open-ended. It isn’t a contract for widgets that need to mesh with a dooflicker and cause a bottleneck in a factory should your widget end up inspired to be a different than blueprinted shape, taking a different process and longer time to make. There’s no one depending on your poem-widget to do any particular function.
Make something good is the mandate. Don’t care what it does in language — surprise me, or please me, teach, amuse, offend, engage, extend, remind. Just make something.