Some thoughts...
This is a "work in progress."
- An aside
- Reality check
- Then why seek grants?
- Writing grant proposals is like taking essay tests for a living
- Tips and hints
"clarity...simplicity...brevity...humanity"
Those four simple words represent the best advice a writer can receive (found in On Writing Well by William Zinsser). They are also the most difficult goals that a writer would strive to achieve. And once achieved, the struggle to attain them starts anew with the next project. The struggle does not necessarily get easier with repetition.
I have always wanted to write, but lacked the imagination to produce fiction. Proposal writing, a form of creative nonfiction, seems an ideal choice for the imagination impaired. "Creative Nonfiction heightens the whole concept and idea of essay writing. It allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of the essayist." (Creative Nonfiction. What Is Creative Nonfiction? 29 July 2004, <http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/whatiscnf.htm> 18 August 2004)
I did not start out to be a writer of funding proposals. In fact, my first career in radio, although decidedly verbal, involved little writing or even much need for literacy. (Today, it seems to require even less.) It wasn't until my mid-life-crisis-career-change that I came to realize that there were such things as "grantwriters" or that I could be one. Even then, seeking funding through grants seemed only a sideline to my plan to become a museum exhibit designer/educator. It is only because fundraisers are far more employable than exhibit designers (and because I've since fallen in love with my work) that I am what I am today.
