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In September I told you some things I learned while writing my first grant application. Today I received word that I did in fact receive funding based on that application. I wasn't granted the full amount I asked for but the amount I received is significant enough to really help me take a step forward with this specific project and my photography at large.

After I sent my grant application in I took a hard, critical look at all the materials I had included with my application packet. I tried to review the packet as objectively as I could. In doing so I realized that my sample works were far, far weaker than I would have liked them to have been and that the structure of my project still needs to be edited and fine tuned a bit. I considered those two issues to be large problems that it in all likelihood would prevent me from receiving the grant.That is to say I was completely certain I would not be receiving the grant. So I was of course overjoyed but also genuinely surprised when I received the letter from the foundation today.

There are several layers to my joy. The first, obviously, is that a committee of strangers reviewed my work, my descriptions, my letters of recommendation, etc and came to the conclusion that my work is worthy of their foundation's financial support. Naturally that is a bit of an ego boost (imagine me channeling Sally Field's "You like me" speech). On another level though it makes me feel so good to have some confirmation that this thing, this making art and making a life outside of the usual or even expected path is possible. It's also small bit of validation for those of us who came to our art a bit later in life than others or who took different paths to find our way to this spot, this place, this way of being in our lives.

This is a bit more touchy-feely than I'm normally comfortable being but please indulge me and allow me to say that if you're one of us, one who knows the corporate path, the 9-5 path or any of the other expected paths isn't for you have faith that you can make a different kind of life. It will not always be easy, in fact its rather hard and can be quite stressful a lot of the time, but it is so worth it. It's worth it every single day.

I've spent the last month or so with my head buried in a grant application. I've been working on a documentary photography project for the last several months and I've bootstrapped it the entire way. Meaning any cost associated with the project have come out of my pockets. No one is paying me to do the project, I'm doing it because I think it's a good project and the stories involved are worth being told.

I've learned a lot about myself and my project during the grant application process so I thought I'd write about a few tips/things I've learned because they might help another artist/writer struggling with the grant process.

1. Everyone has a first time.
No one comes out of the womb knowing how to write a grant proposal or application. The first few times you do it you're just going to have to muddle your way through it until you figure out what you're doing. You can ask people for help and they might give you good advice but it's still going to be you muddling through it. Don't let the fact that you don't know exactly what to do or you don't know exactly what the review committee wants to discourage. If you've made the commitment to apply for the grant then follow through. Even if you think your application doesn't have a chance of being accepted do the work to get the application completed. Having your first one done is going to make the second one much easier to complete.

2. It's a learning experience
I guarantee that you'll learn some things about yourself and your project during the process of writing the application. I learned about some of my insecurity triggers, learned that the vision I had for my project needed to be seriously tweaked, and that my work samples needed to be much stronger. Those were hard lessons to learn but I'm glad I learned them and I think they made my grant application stronger.

3. Writing is Easy
That's bullshit right? Yes but also no. While working on my grant application I found Scott Berkun's Writing Hacks Part 1. The first line is "Writing is easy, it's quality that's hard." True enough Scott, true enough. He goes on to say

Any idiot who knows 5 words can write a sentence (e.g. "Dufus big much Scott is"). It might be grammarless, broken, or inaccurate but it is writing. This means that when people can't start they're imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept. Good voice, tone, rhythm, ideas and grammar are essential to good writing, but they're never introduced all at once. I promise you, the first draft of Strunk and White didn't follow Strunk and White. The secret, if you can't start, is to begin without constraints. Deliberately write badly, but write.

For this reason writer's block is a sham. Anyone who wrote yesterday can write today, it's just a question of if they can do it to their own satisfaction. It's not the fear of writing that blocks people, it's its fear of not writing well; something quite different. Certainly every writer has moments of paralysis, but the way out is to properly frame what's going on, and writer's block, as commonly misunderstood, is a red herring.

Those two paragraphs really, really resonated with me and helped me conquer the much dreaded "description of activities" section of my grant application that had had me paralyzed. I had stared at blank page after blank page. I had started and deleted paragraphs time and again. I had been unable to move forward because I couldn't get the first paragraph right. Berkun's words were a kick in the pants that let me write the "shitty first draft" and move on.

So I very much encourage you to accept that every single thing you write needs a shitty first draft before it can be any good, including your grant applications or proposals. Don't try to hit it out of the park with the first swing. Just get a draft down on paper. 98% of it will probably suck but there will nuggets of good work in there that you'll be on with each successive draft.

4. Most of Us Won't Get the Grant But It's Worth Trying Anyway
I don't think I'm going to get the grant I applied for. My work samples were still a bit too work and my project not honed tightly enough toward the organization giving the grant. I don't regret any of the time I spent on the application though. I learned from the experience, sharpened some "writing about myself" skills, made necessary tweaks to my project and got my name and work in front of the review committee. These are all really positive developments.

I'm in. I'm registered for the conference and I've got a hotel room. Hope to see you there.

As a SXSW newbie I've been advised to just take in the experience and not try to do to much. I'm not very good at that. I've always got a goal or a plan or an angle I'm working and this time is no different. As part of a long term documentary photography project I'm working on I'd like to do some quick interactive shooting with a variety of people from different backgrounds, ages and opinions. SXSW seems like a pretty good place to find such a group of people. Not only such a group of people but a group of people that are typically pretty open to new media and new art experiences and projects.

Basically I'd like to have people give a very brief (ten words or less) written response to a specific fill in the blank question. They'd write this response in big letters on a large piece of paper. I'd then quickly photograph them holding their response. They sign a release (the project may be published) and then they'd be on their merry way. Should take less than 5 minutes per person on average.

SXSW veterans please tell me if there is a good spot outside the convention center to set up such a project. Some place that will see a fair amount of foot traffic but won't impede people getting where they need to go. Some place where I won't get in trouble for setting up. Also please tell me if you'd be willing to participate in my little project.

I'm really excited about the long term project but I also think that doing this component of it at SXSW will be a lot of fun and a great way to meet people. Agree?

Tags: photography, sxsw, sxswi

Just in case any one is interested, I've changed the url to my photoblog. It is now http://www.michellejones.net/blog/. So update your links, feed readers, etc.

I'm working on a personal art project that requires a little help from willing participants. The participation? Giving me your mailing address. Yep, that's it. I want to eventually mail you something. Maybe it's something you'll love, maybe it's something you'll hate but it will be small and won't clutter your house and you can throw it away easily in an instant. I don't care what you do when you get it, I just want to send it. I don't care if you toss it because truthfully this project is about helping me grow as a person generally and more specifically as a creative person. It's about helping me stop being afraid to be the kind of person I want to be.

I wanted to do this project simply and quietly. Meaning no announcement on a blog, no big deal making. I'd just ask for or confirm a few people's addresses and then one day something would show up in their mailbox. Hopefully that something would make them smile a little bit or it would just add a little pleasantness to their day. But I was afraid that people would just think I was weird. As strange as I am "that's weird" isn't the response I'm looking for in this project. I don't think anyone would say to me "it's weird that you sent me something" but the fear is still kind of there. Even though I really like this idea and really want to do it that fear is still there. So I'm asking you to help me over the fear of making a fool of myself, over the fear of personal failure. If you're interested/willing to participate then I'll feel slightly more secure in this little personal art project. I'll feel a little less afraid that it's just another dumb idea.

I had a clear idea of who I wanted to participate back when I was just going to do this quietly. I still want those people to participate (though I've decided against asking them directly. If I know you and like you then I probably want you to participate) but I'm open to people I don't know participating as well. I see it as a potential doorway to getting to know new people.

So if you're willing to participate just drop a comment here saying you're interested or email me directly (address in the sidebar) and I'll get back to you for your address soon.

Fondly,
Michelle

Cecily is talking about notebooks and her thoughts moved me. My response was

I love notebooks as well. I have a current spiral and moleskine going at all times, each having different purposes. As a writer myself I too have taken that “you must journal” mantra to heart and took it, I must say, too literally. I thought that if I wasn’t writing down minute details of my day that were full of literariness (”I stopped in the street and noticed the blossom on the tree had grown in both size and beauty since I last passed”) then I wasn’t doing it right.

It took time but eventually I came to think of my moleskine as just my notebook, not some great historical notebook that demanded great things be written in it. So it became home to grocery lists and to-do lists and book club meeting times etc. But then it also become home to the first paragraphs of future books, “Out There Someday Ideas,” projects I want to take on, next actions for projects I want to start now, quotes that inspire or touch me, miniature collages, occasionally actual real journal entries about what I’m thinking or feeling, and sometimes honest to god insane observations about the blossom in the tree being grander in scale and beauty than it was yesterday.

My point being, it was only when I stopped stressing about filling my notebook with literary and artful things that I could actually start filling my notebook up with literary and artful things. That and I also started doing collage in a different context and it made me think about myself as an artist in a different way and that left me feeling more inspired and motivated.

It's true that I had a lovely moloskine notebook that intimidated me because I wasn't creating anything wonderful and beautiful in it. It took a long time for me to realize that more important than not creating anything wonderful and beautiful was the fact that I wasn't creating anything at all. The key part of being a creative person is creating. I was so frozen by the fear of what I was doing not being good that I stopped doing anything. For several months over the summer and fall I barely wrote at all. Writing, which I love almost more than breathing, was not part of my life, not even in simple blog form. So with writing being gone calling myself a creative person or an artist was more than little stretch. What I was doing though was falling in love with photography. Honestly and truly in love with it. I love having my camera everywhere and shooting everything imaginable. Even when the shots turn out poorly I'm happy with the action itself because usually I learn something from the bad shot or the experience.

Did you catch that? Even when the shot itself is a failure it's really not, because I'm learning from the shot itself or the experience and I'm progressing and I'm creating. I keep a notebook that I paste "bad" prints. After a little bit of time has passed I look at the prints again and add notes beside them about what's wrong, what could be better and what I've learned. Even when I fail, it's not horrible. Even when I fail I'm not horrible.

I became conscious of these things back in October or early November. I think that for a long time I'd wanted to define myself as a writer above all other things and really wasn't open to many other creative outlets. Or to put it another way, if I was going to call myself a creative person (and that's a big if) then the only justification I had for it was that I was a writer. I can't draw stick figures, I haven't played music in over a decade, etc. I didn't have any talent in any other areas other than. Forces came together for me in the fall ((more like things were bad, really bad for a while in the fall and I was thinking a lot about how to make things better and how to be a better, happier person) and when I was thinking about creativity and art and things I'd like to do and try in my life kfan quoted from Kabuki: The Alchemy* #5 and it resonated with me in a big way.

Don't wait for some kind of validation or logic to give you external motivation, or you will never start. You don't have to make a living at it at first. Just begin it.

I find that to accomplish anything, you need initiative, persistence, discipline, and will. And most of all the decision to just do it and set it in motion. The conventional idea of talent is an illusion.

So many people have a natural talent and do nothing with it. You must do something in order for your talent to show up. You don't just wait for it to show up and do nothing.

That's a snippet of what he quoted (no link for the full quote). I read the whole thing over and over and over again. It just resonated with me. I can't explain it. Let me be earnest and cheesy and say that it moved me and moved some blocks in my mind.

Shortly after that I started a couple new photography projects that I had been wanting to work on as well as starting to make collages. I used to looked at collages as a children's art that grownups like to wrap in the trappings of adulthood. Meaning you can dress a collage up but it's still just something that a little kid could do. Now I love doing collage. Seriously. Taking ephemera, images, quotes, words, colors, shapes, thoughts, feelings, mixing it all up and seeing what comes out is fascinating and fun. Now my sketchbook, glue stick, scissors and sketchpad (my preferred collage destination) are always near by. Are my collages masterworks? No, of course not. Does that matter? No, of course not. Can anyone do it? Yes! But who says that's a bad thing?

I think of myself now as a creative person, maybe even something close to an artist. I'm a writer, I'm a collage maker, I'm a photographer, I'm open to other creative endeavors. My notebook is full of ideas and works in progress, of business plans and creative dreams and grocery lists and birthday present lists and all sorts of things that make up the life of a creative sort.

I wish that my notebook was filled with brilliant ideas that would turn me into an instant creative and financial success. But it's ok that it's not. It's ok that I try and it's ok that I sometimes fail. It's ok for you to try too and it's ok for you to fail.

Also see:
http://artjournalproject.blogspot.com/
http://www.kerismith.com/blog/