Literary Risks and Money
No City Grant for Me This Year
The City of Ottawa offers grants for emerging and established creators. I have a good history of getting grants. This year was one of the years I wasn’t awarded one. I wrote an application for non-fiction instead of poetry. This was a risk. I’ve never applied for non-fiction through the City before. I gambled. I lost. This year especially I could have really used the money. I knew that back in January when the application was due. Would I have been awarded funding if I had handed in yet another poetry application? I’ve had hits and misses there, but I’ve had more successful applications than failures with poetry.
If you are awarded a grant, you have to wait two years before applying again. The good news is I can apply for my next grant in February 2024, instead of waiting until 2025, and given my health care costs these days, with expensive eczema meds, chances are I will still really need the dough.
What I’m pondering is the idea of risk and funding. Do you take a chance and hand in a funding proposal for work that you really want to do and are fascinated by, something new to you or do you write a proposal for what you are more likely to get funding for?
Lots of other issues with funding of course. The Arts are not as well-funded as they should be and there is only so much money to go around. I don’t worry that what I handed in wasn’t good. It was fucking good. It wasn’t conventional though. It was a mix of memoir, essay, whimsy, and even poetic prose, with a little vispo thrown in. So it was risky and I knew it. I also knew that if I was going to spend three months on something based on the amount of funding I would have received, it was going to have to be work that I was driven to create, urgent work.
My main objective is to write so that kindred misfits do not feel alone. Next year’s proposal, whatever it may be will also have that objective. It may be weird and risky too. I can’t really compromise on that. I have to do what drives me, not what I think people expect me to do, even if doing what’s expected or what’s more accepted might get me the money I need.
I am privileged to be in a position where it won’t destroy me financially not to have this money. There are those who need it more than I do. See you next year, City jurors. I promise to write a killer and weird proposal. I can’t guarantee it will succeed, but it won’t be bullshit.
I can relate. Wrote a few proposals (technical rather than artistic but still creative) that were not successful this spring and had some doubts. While not everyone appreciates risk takers, many, especially those who work for a bureaucracy, are risk averse. But I feel creating people have to dwell on the frontiers for a good part of their time.
Still it is a great gift to make connections with people who are very different from ourselves. That’s where we can often make a difference in surprising ways.