get a grant to fund my art

Dear RuthG,
The Illinois Arts Council was pleased to have had the opportunity to consider your application for a fellowship in poetry. I regret to inform you that it was not one of those selected for funding.

I just don’t think this is going to happen. Not enough options for funding, & competition is too fierce for this particular fellowship.

Find available grants to apply for. Get an idea of what’s available what it will take.

this morning – & I even got to work a little early afterward.

I think my current application is stronger than the one I did two years ago. So here’s hoping!

• Changing document status to: SUBMITTED
• Complete!

Now I’m printing out everything I need to hand-deliver tomorrow morning on the way to work (work samples, proof of residence, statement of assurances).

Public thanks to Sherlock7437 for giving me some invaluable feedback. I trimmed down the artist statement to make space for her main content suggestion – & along the way I found some more wordiness to excise. A poet must not be wordy!

Notification isn’t till January 2009, so now I shall set this on a mental back shelf & focus on more immediate stuff.

I put together my “artistic resume” & then drafted the artist’s statement. Feels great to get those done! Not that they’re necessarily final . . . My dear friend Sherlock, master grant writer & winner, is going to look over the artist’s statement & give me some feedback! Isn’t that a lovely kindness?

I chose the poems to include as my work samples, & I got partway through the online application. Recent work (completed in 2004 or sooner) is requested; I was pleased to see that most of the poems I wanted to include are from 2008! It has been a poetically juicy year so far.

Next I have to write a bio/resumé, up to 500 words long. We are told that the information in it is definitely taken into account in the second-level deliberations among the three judges. So I need to take time with this.

for the state arts council—& today I got its call for fellowship applications. Deadline: September 2.

Since I am in a good place with my writing, & since the lost arts funding was restored in the final state budget, I will definitely go ahead & put together an application. I hope my current juiciness will spill over & make me irresistible!

I am a bit silly at the moment. :-)

again this August/September. That will be after I’ve attended the June workshop & hopefully begun to practice/absorb the new insights I gain there.

The state budget for this year reduced arts funding, so the grant program will be more competitive than ever. But I’ll hope for the best.

I didn’t get the fellowship I applied for.

Right now it makes me really sad, I guess because I’ve been working too hard & am exhausted. It would have been so wonderful to be able to afford to take time off & focus on writing & honing my craft.

But I’ll be OK, & I’ll get back to looking & applying when I can find time for it.

today! Within the deadline—yea!!