Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Against Project Descriptions, as such: an open letter to the Canada Council for the Arts

I just finished writing a grant application to the Canada Council. I decided, against the better judgment of sensible folk, to use the space allotted to a "project description" to explain why I am not including a project description. Because I wrote this in the hopes that it would generate fruitful discussion about these matters, I've decided to share my argument with a creative writing program officer at the CC, and with anyone else who cares to hear about it. I know there are a lot of writers who share my basic position on this matter; if you do, I urge you to share your thoughts with the Canada Council. Herewith, my non-project description:


Description of Project

In past applications, I have written several paragraphs describing the project for which I was requesting support. I did this even though I am not a writer who works from any sort of pre-formulated plan and therefore had no “project” per se. I did this because I believed that perfect honesty would hurt my cause. Because I am not overly fond of prevarication and because I am a perhaps unreasonably proud person, I toyed with the idea, this time, of tersely describing my proposed project as “a book of poems” and leaving it at that. I have decided, instead, to provide a reasoned argument defending my decision not to describe a project, as such.

This is, in many ways, more difficult and, I recognize, more risky an approach than the fabulation of a straightforward project description. I have been advised against proceeding thus by other writers who have read drafts of this text, as they are concerned that it is an arrogant approach that will potentially alienate jurors who might otherwise be predisposed towards supporting my application. I have decided not to follow my friends' well-intended advice, for several reasons. First, I see no cause to conceal my working methods; however erratic they may seem to an outside observer, they have stood me in good stead. Second, I think more writers need to apply for support from a position of pride and strength, rather than as duplicitous suppliants; if I am not willing to do this myself, then I am a hypocrite. The present government tends to regard publicly funded artists as parasites; rather than keep a low profile to avoid attracting the Conservatives' wrath, as I have heard several artists say we should do, I think this is the time to stand up and be counted, to be boldly unapologetic about our worth to society. A grant application may not seem the place or time to do this, but if we fail to model positive behaviour even within the relatively safe confines of our artistic enclaves, I do not see how there can be much hope of us doing it in a broader public setting. Finally, I am proceeding likewise because I believe that the notion one must have a project has had an insidiously pernicious effect on the sort of poetry books that have been written and published in this country, placing too much emphasis on the book as unit of production. Stuart Ross, a veteran of the Canadian writing scene whose work has won widespread acclaim and been nominated for a shelfload of prizes, recently spoke out about this in a column in Sub-Terrain magazine: “Does a focused Project or Theme make for a better book of poetry? Nope — more often than not it means oat-meal-like homogeneity. Or some interesting idea stretched beyond its natural limit to achieve “book length.” But it sure makes it easier to describe what you’re working on when you have to fill out a grant application.” Obviously, if a writer of Stuart's bent happens to be on a jury, he won't punish an application for want of a coherent description. Perhaps there are many such jurors out there, but the impression given, and received, is that the project description is important and that it must be adhered to if monies are to be granted. A writer friend confided to me once that she did not think her project was working out, but that she felt obliged to follow through on it, having received a grant. She cannot be the only such conscientious soul to have felt this way and to have therefore wasted time and energy in the production of mediocre work. The Canada Council exists to support artists, not to influence the genre of art being produced. Whatever the intentions behind asking for project descriptions, the effects are not altogether salutary.

First off, I must say that I do see the rationale behind asking for a project description, even if I don't agree that it should be required. The sums of money being disbursed are not insignificant, and one wishes to be sure that taxpayers' dollars go to people who will make good use of them. When it comes to writers without much of a track record, a well-written pitch can only help a jury, desperate for objective criteria in a highly subjective field, to form an impression of a writer's credibility. Young writers, aware that they work in a competitive field, will naturally try to outdo their peers in crafting the most persuasive-sounding descriptions possible. This is why I had no insurmountable qualms about writing detailed, albeit somewhat fanciful, descriptions of my projects in previous applications, two of which have been successful. When going to a job interview, one shaves and puts on a tie; one doesn't go as one's slovenly self.

Once a writer has established something of a pedigree and amassed a basket of awards and credentials, however, it seems that past performance, along with a sample of recent writing, should be amply sufficient to judge their application's merit. I could tell you all manner of fine things about what I intend to write—I have spent much of the past dozen years, after all, turning out polished verse and magazine prose, so eloquence and balderdash come to me naturally—but it is the poems I have already written and the books I have already published that should make or break my case, regardless of whether my description is an honest plan, a cynical strategy or a half-cocked fantasy.

None of my poems has been written according to a pre-conceived blueprint. The variety of subject matter, form, voice and technique in my enclosed writing sample reflects my credo that with every poem one writes, one starts fresh. Having composed a poem on one subject and/or in a certain manner, I am not interested in following the same patterns again. I want to surprise myself and my readers, which is, as a goal, rather difficult to convey in advance of its advent. Writing for me has always been experimental, a process of discovery, rather than an agenda of tasks to be checked off upon completion. Sometimes, I write prolifically. Often, I don't. Much of the creative work I do does not qualify as grantable art, much more yet fails to amount to anything worthwhile, but most if not all of what I decide to publish contributes to literary culture. If I were perfectly honest in a project description, I would have to admit that there is some chance that I will not write a single poem during the period covered by the grant. History suggests otherwise, but it is nevertheless a potentiality I confront on a regular basis. The thing is, one never can say how much work a poet gets done when she appears to be doing nothing at all. One year, I spent several months in an anhedonic funk, during which I wrote almost nothing despite having a wealth of free time; at the end of it, I wound up producing what I think will stand as one my very best poems. This is why “project descriptions” are, frankly, absurd for so many of us (even while, I concede, there are some who seem to work very well within the parameters laid out by a project description).

I may not have much of a clue what it is I will do next, but patterns established over the past decade-plus suggest that it will be something—and that the something in question will have an impact on culture, in however marginal a way, as tends to be the case with small-press literary activities. I won't rehash my C.V., as you have it in front of you already. I have done a substantial quantity of good work and that work has received positive notice, grants, prizes, anthologizations. One thing I do know is that the less I have to chase after income to ensure that my family continues to enjoy a reasonably high quality of life, the more likely I am to get good work done—the more opportunity I will have to read, reflect and learn what it is I might do next. I look forward to discovering what that work will be, and a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts will go some distance towards helping me do so. I have every confidence that a grant at this stage of my development as a writer will be money well spent. I hope that you agree.

16 comments:

Susan Glickman said...

Bravo Zach. Couldn't agree more, though I never articulated my discomfort with this part of the application process as clearly as this, even to myself. I always saw "project description" as a necessary evil. My solution in the past has been to emphasize the stylistic and technical challenges I was setting myself more than the thematic coherence of the incipient work.

Pat Warner said...

Zach, my experience echoes yours: every good poem starts from scratch. Many writers I've spoken with have confessed (as if it were a dirty secret) that they don't really know what they think until they write it down (if I could think, my son, I wouldn't write). The most exciting writing—as you point out—comes from an argument with the self, the results of which are often a surprise to the writer (and so to the reader). It's depressing to think of poets simply colouring in an outline they have created as part of a grant application. Then again, I wonder how often it really happens that a finished book of poetry reflects exactly the work as it was described in the proposal. And does the CC really care if the proposal is followed or not? Does it even follow up with successful grant applicants?--one writer mentioned to me that she had used her entire grant to renovate her kitchen. The project description may only be a formality; this of course doesn’t damage your reasonable protest: if anything it strengthens your case. It will be interesting to see if the Committee responds to your statement with something more than a generic: "Your application has failed to meet established criteria." Good on you for shaking the tree.

Zachariah Wells said...

Thanks, Susan; Pat. The range of responses in various places has been interesting. The most puzzling to me are the ones along the lines of "the description doesn't matter, it's the work the jurors focus on." As you say, Pat, if anything, that just strengthens the case against the description being included at all. It seems odd to provide space for a 2 page document that isn't supposed to count for anything. So many people tell me it's the thing about a grant application they find most taxing, vexing and labour intensive. Nowhere in the instructions does it say: "don't worry about the project description because no one's going to pay any attention to it." And nowhere does it say that if you change your mind after you get the money, that's cool. Sure, everyone knows it is, but "everyone" isn't everyone; I know people who have thought they'd have to give back their grants because they failed to follow thru on what they said they were going to do. So why not just clear everything up right nice and have people tick off "poetry" or "novel" and let the jurors make their judgments based on past performance alone.

You're right, Pat, there isn't any real scrutiny; all that's required at the end is a terse little report on activities. It would be ridiculous to try to trace where every dollar went. The money goes into household revenue and if you're in a household of several people, as you and I and Susan are, there's no such thing as money for this and money for that. There's just money in and money out. Sometimes, you need to renovate your house. Sometimes you can afford it. You're getting paid to do work, same as you get paid by the library to do library work and I get paid by Via Rail to do train work. Imagine if our employers started poking around to see if we were spending our income "correctly"! Which is precisely what the project description is supposed to demonstrate, I imagine, in the mind of the bureaucrat that conceived of it. It provides the surface sheen of--ugly word--accountability.

Wally Keeler said...

Wow! Zach! Reads well and I couldn't agree more.

I have always eschewed applying for largesse from the state for the simple reason of attitude. I have a rotten attitude. The last thing I want in my life is to be grateful to the Canadian people for anything. Now that is independence. Unfortunately to my detriment.

Pat Warner said...

Accountability...It’s a nasty little word. I raised it for the following reason: if the quality of the grant proposal is deemed to be a defining criterion in the decision about who gets a grant, then it would seem a dereliction of duty for the granting body not to be interested in the outcome of that grant....And on the matter of Via Rail or Library work being analogous to getting a Canada council grant in terms of accountability, I don’t know if you make your argument. It’s not so much a question of money as it is a question of time. When I’m on the job I’m expected to be there between certain hours. As well, there are ways in which my performance on the job can be reviewed and judged. My employer has no business questioning how I spend my pay, only how I spend my time when I’m at work. It’s probably the same for you. This is not quite the same thing as getting a grant to do creative work where there is no structure in place to determine how the grant holder uses his time. In the latter case, there is only the work the grant holder produces at the end of the day. ...The answer to the problem is, I think, the one you propose: grants should be awarded on the basis of past work and past achievements. Applications from writers just starting out should be judged on the basis of the samples of the work they provide.

Zachariah Wells said...

Wally, I'm rather partial to many of the features of our democracy, such as public education and public health care. Problems with 'em, yes, always room for improvement, but better to have 'em than not. Ditto for public art funding, in my opinion.

Pat: yeah, the questions of how-d'you-spend-the-dough and how-d'you-spend-the-time are distinct. A grant's not enough for me to give up work altogether, but it's enough for me to turn down o.t. and scale back freelance, maybe pay for some extra childcare, etc. Or just stay of EI...

The compartmentalization of creative activity a project description suggests we have to undertake is a problem related to this accountability issue. As I said in my letter, a lot of what I do in the lit sphere falls outside of what I can get a grant for. Two books I've published in recent years were editorial projects (much more comfortable with this terminology when it comes to editing!) that took a lot of time to complete and paid little (The Essential Kenneth Leslie) or nothing (Jailbreaks). Can't recall now if any of that time overlapped with grant time, but what of it? I see them as being at least as positive a contribution to culture as my more "grant-worthy" work. This is where the faux accountability of project descriptions really starts rubbing me the wrong way. Grants should go to creative citizens who make contributions to culture. I don't consider myself a poet; I much prefer, when necessary to say that I'm a writer and editor. Writing an original poem is only one facet of how I, and many other creative citizens, go about our business. But if I'm doing these other things (editing, translating, writing essays, etc.) while I'm "supposed to be writing poems," I'm technically in dereliction of my duty. Which is nuts.

Wally Keeler said...

I'm all for public funding of the arts. It's just that I have declined to drink from the trough on principle. Back in the day my work was a scathing satire of the state and I thought it inappropoetic to take cash from that same entity.

Also I was engaged with smuggling activities of dissident art/lit/music in&out of the former commie countries. I was arrested in some of those countries and it was to my advantage that I was a FREE MAN, an individual, and not a paid element of state, which would have been the case if they learned I had received government cash. The "arm's length" aspect doesn't hold any merit with totalitarians.

If one chose to be a real subversive to The State, then I felt it necessary that I receive no cash from The State, any State.

I no longer see subversive activity in my future, so your article and the comments of others here has provided me with valuable insights. Thank you all.

Zachariah Wells said...

By the way, Wally, one of the poems I included in my writing sample was the piece based loosely on the story you told me about the Great Cobourg Starling Invasion. So in all future grant applications, I'll be including a line to the effect of "funds for transportation to Cobourg for poem-spurring conversations with Wally."

Jonathan Bennett said...

Careful mate. Some might call you lazy after reading this. Because, Zach, I think you know, or should know, exactly what you are working on, or what's interesting or guiding you, even if it's simply in comparison to your earlier work. So, are you being intellectually lazy, or entitled, by rufusing to describe your forthcoming efforts in a few straightforward words for your near-blind, over-read, fellow-writers on the jury? Have you ever been on a jury? If not, walk (or read) a mile.

I admire your ethics, Zach. In this case though they've been used to save you from the difficult work of summoning forth conviction and committment to describe, in general terms, your poems now, and those yet to come.

I use "Project descriptions" as a first draft for later jacket copy. They are, for me, exercises to make me know, really know, what I am doing. If I can't write them, then I know I'm not yet ready to apply, that the current project has not yet emerged enough. There is always next year after all, and many other worthy writers to take this year's money. Cheers, J

Zachariah Wells said...

Believe me, Jonathan, it cost me several pints more sweat to do this than it would have to cook up a description. I have a template for those, dontcha know.

And no, I don't really know what I'm about, in a big-picture sense, until I've got a good 2/3 of the jigsaw together, at least. (This is as true of single poems as it is of agglomerations; I wrote a lengthy essay on the things I didn't know I was doing in one poem, for Shane Neilson's anthology on poem-geneses.) Or so it's been in my fairly ltd. experience to-date. And it says right on the CC website that grants are not retroactive, so I can't apply for funds to do work I've already finished, now can I? However you cut it, having someone like me do a project description amounts to inviting me to gull you in a confidence game.

One thing I can say is that I've usually got 2 or 3 "projects" on the go at once. My second book is only my second book by virtue of its being _published_ after my first. Many of the poems in it are older than many of the poems in the first. The same will be true of my third book when it comes out. And this is only counting the poems, never mind the prose, editorial things, etc. So no, I'm never at work on a single project. I work helter skelter on a bunch of different stuff at once, as the mood takes me. Hard to sell that, innit?

PS: I fucking hate writing jacket copy, whether it's for myself or someone else.

Zachariah Wells said...

Eureka! I don't work on projects, I work on retrojects!

Jonathan Ball said...

The bureaucracy strikes again. Unfortunately, you've put the CCA in a position where they absolutely must reject this grant application. I suspect, in fact, that it will never reach a jury. I once had an application returned to me (without being submitted to a jury) due to a technicality. I had submitted two grants as an Alberta author (which was allowed at the time), and had the second returned to me, because it "duplicated expenses" (taking place over the same time period). I suggested that I obviously would not be successful on both applications, and so there was no problem unless I DID receive both grants, in which case I could simply refuse one or have one withheld, or just alter my projected timeline so as not to duplicate expenses. I was told this could not be done and had the grant I submitted second (a stronger project, a larger sum) returned to me (though I requested that the first be the one rejected). The kicker of it all is that when I applied to the provincial council, and called to ask if it was okay to propose a project on the same timeline as the one already being considered at the CC, they said that obviously it didn't matter, so long as I either refused any successful grant that would duplicate the expenses of a first successful grant -- or just alter my projected timelines!

Jonathan Ball said...

Although, as someone who tends to work on "books" rather than single poems (and thus can more readily summarize or describe a project), I do think there is a value to having a clear vision. Since other writers work in other ways, I can sympathize with the frustration. Really, though, what you seem to want is an award for past work, not a grant for future work. Or rather, an "award" for future work. Basically, a "gamble on me" grant. Certainly established writers are better gambles. But if it all comes down to gambling and the actual "project" is irrelevant, then to a certain degree the purpose of the organization is diluted.

Zachariah Wells said...

I'm not going to get all paranoid. I have no reason to believe the grant won't be read by a jury. If anything, I've exceeded the minimum requirements in the "project description" box.

I don't think the purpose of the organization would be diluted at all. I think the purpose of the project description is presently diluted because of all the people who routinely work around it. It isn't very hard to work around. This alone is grounds for nixing it. The accountability it's supposed to create is an illusion. The bet is only hedged in appearance.

All grants are "take a gamble on me" grants. I'm just saying that this should be explicit because project descriptions are at best useless and at worst a nuisance, insofar as they influence writers towards one way of approaching writing instead of myriad other options.

And the bets are already hedged in favour of established writers: they get twice as much money. If an emerging writer doesn't pan out, they never become a "mid-career" or "established" writer. In theory...

Gillian Wallace said...

I'm very sympathetic, Zach. I hate writing project descriptions too. I think it would help if they had two tick boxes: 1. 'does your project have an overall theme, if so, describe'; 2. 'is your project a collection of poems, tick here'. Then those of us who write, as you say, the poems that come fresh from life would finally have an option that allowed us more integrity.

Brian Campbell said...

As Thomas Moore writes in an excellent book I'm reading called "Care of the Soul", "When we allow ourselves to exist truly and fully, we *sting* the world with our vision and challenge it with our own ways of being." Good on you, buddy. May it bring worthy results...