So it’s grant writing season again. Like a less fun version of hunting season. Both require patience, preparation and copious amount of beer. Both start in the fall. But when hunting game, I feel that if you know what you’re doing and do it well you are likely to bring home dinner. Also, when you’re hunting, once you’ve fired that shot you know more or less immediately whether or not you’ve hit something. With grants you don’t find out until months later. So I guess it’s more like hunting carrots, and the bullet is a seed. And you have to wait for it to grow. But that would make this a gardening analogy, which just doesn’t capture the stress, violence and terror of grant-writing.
Full disclosure: I have never been hunting. I base my analogy entirely on fuzzy childhood memories of watching my dad go hunting with his buddies. And I don’t think he ever took beer. That comes from Hollywood stereotypes of drunken rednecks shooting each other in the feet. I maintain that beer is absolutely necessary to get through an extended grant season, however.
To belabor my already exhausted metaphor, I should point out that it’s the Theatre Creators’ Reserve grants that are due which are sort of like the artist’s version of a shotgun: you fire off a lot of small, scattered proposals and hope that one of the dozens hit hard enough to draw blood. Blood being analogous for money (in case you missed the earlier over-extended metaphor.) I would much rather get money from the arts council.
But that’s the system. So for now, I’ll hunker down in my blind, fire at anything that moves and try not to take off my own toe.