Cash Me Up, Buttercup
by Diana Jenkins
My role as Varuna’s Alumni Features Editor is so interesting – you never stop surprising me, gang. I never know what’s going to strike a chord, and sometimes I’m so sure I’m onto a dead cert only to be greeted by deafening silence. It keeps me on my toes, to say the least.
Take this month’s topic: funding. As soon as Alumna Alison Quigley suggested it, following the publication of her own very helpful article on the subject in the WQ, the monthly publication of the Queensland Writers’ Centre (QWC), I thought, ‘Of course! Perfect!’ I was convinced that my request for your thoughts and personal tales of fielding grant applications would be met by a tsunami of sound advice, personal grievances and the odd tale of fiscal triumph. I sat back and waited for my Inbox to flood.
But it has been a dry, dry winter. There was no flood, no bubbling brook, no puddle, not even so much as a gob of spit – although I must give a special shout out to Alumna Taryn Hall-Smith (who writes as Taryn Bashford), who emailed to say she received a grant from her local council to attend the Varuna Residential Fellowship from which she’s only just returned. See? It would never have occurred to me to investigate whether or not my own local council offers any arts grants, so it’s a very useful thing to know that some councils do – perhaps even including your own. But other than that, it’s been a month of drought.
Maybe most of you are as clueless as I am...I’m not even the right person to be writing this feature. I haven’t applied for funding since I was knocked back for an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) in 2001, apparently thanks to my only bringing an Upper 2A Honours Degree to the table instead of a First Class. And I gotta say, it was irksome watching some APA recipients fail to deliver an actual thesis while I worked three part-time jobs to support myself. It’s not like they had to pay back the money if they didn’t complete – they were perfectly at liberty to simply ride the gravy train until the money ran out (hardly anyone was guilty of this, by the way, but there were a couple). The people deciding these things have to draw the line somewhere, and life is not fair, but I remain unconvinced that the sole measure of my own project’s merit rested with undergraduate results I’d earned 7 years earlier.
As you may have guessed by my failure to let it go more than a decade later, that experience really shat me, and I haven’t applied for funding since. But the smart money, as it were, is definitely still on the APA program if you’re trying to write a) a novel, b) a book of poems, or c) a short story collection. If I had my time over, I’d enrol in a Creative Writing PhD program (I didn’t even know these existed until it was too late – talk about an unlikely research student!).
Think about it. There’s still no guarantee your manuscript will be published, but at least you’ll get paid while you’re writing it (if you’re awarded an APA), and you get to call yourself a Doctor of Philosophy at the end of it, which is pretty cool in its own right and also tends to shut up the naysayers for a while.
The only thing you have to do that you wouldn’t already be doing anyway is write a research paper that relates to the creative component of your project – a paper that is a fraction of the length of a traditional research thesis like mine. Let’s not kid ourselves: it’s still onerous researching and writing a 30,000-word academic paper to accompany your creative writing, but I’d take it over writing an 80,000-word thesis any day – as I’m sure would most of you. I know several writers who have done or who are currently doing exactly this with excellent success and if I could do it all over again, it’s exactly what I’d do too. So check out the APA policy and application process at your institution/s of choice and good luck.
(As an aside, the postgraduate collegiality is lovely and well worth the multiple part-time jobs even without an APA. It’s a fantastic way to surround yourself with incredibly smart, talented people who respect reading, writing and writers with all their underpaid, undervalued, overworked little hearts.)
One last point about going down the tertiary funding route: I was always in awe of postgraduate colleagues who successfully applied for funding to attend overseas conferences, research trips and so on. As my thesis analysed the work of a contemporary American author, I probably should or could have applied for something or other during my candidature – a postmodernism conference, perhaps – but I didn’t. There was ample evidence to suggest the funds were there, though (one postgrad decamped to Paris and simply never returned), so keep that in mind too.
Since PhD days, I’ve applied for plenty of other programs, including the ASA’s mentorship program (unsuccessfully), but never again for hard, cold cash. For one thing, my experience of being knocked back was very off-putting, because it took a lot of time and energy to complete the paperwork, and for another, I continue to be dogged by the idea that such things aren’t intended for writers like me. That is, unpublished and unproven in the category for which I’d be applying, namely fiction.
I can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that anyone would ever find me worthy under the circumstances – no Australia Council residency in Paris or Rome for me. No sir. The idea’s completely implausible. I would love – LOVE – to think I’ll one day earn the right to put my hat in the ring, because I’m sure spending six months writing in a little Roman studio would be just dandy – it worked wonders for Hemingway in Paris – but the distance between that day and where I am right now feels...well, vast. You couldn’t pay me (ha!) to apply at the moment. And I’m sure it’s a relief to the assessors that there’s one less no-chance-in-hell application in the pile.
Like I said, I’m really not the person to ask about funding. Fortunately Alumna Charlotte Wood provides a succinct Australia Council case study on applying for a grant, which contains several sensible strategies, both for preparing an application and for learning as much as you can from an unsuccessful one.
And many writers do get travel assistance and other sums of money from a variety of sources. Alison Quigley’s aforementioned article, ‘Nab that RADF grant,’ which originally appeared in the June issue of WQ, is the perfect example of how relatively straightforward it can be, and her tips are terrifically practical. Having won a Varuna Fellowship, Alison was faced with the considerable cost of travelling interstate from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to the Blue Mountains, plus the further cost of retaining a mentor. Reading her story, I can’t help but wonder how many gifted writers around the country hesitate to apply for Varuna’s programs because of anticipated travel costs. I’d hazard quite a few, so Alison’s article is an excellent resource for anyone living further afield who’d love to apply. She’s kindly given me permission to republish the article in full (thanks, Ali!), so here it is, and I’ll see you next month.
‘Nab that RADF grant’
by Alison Quigley
At first I was ecstatic. I’d just received the news I’d secured a fellowship for Varuna. But as I studied the finer details, I realised there were considerable drawbacks, including the costs of travel and the fee for a mentor, not included in this particular fellowship.
I knew government grants were available to cover costs like this, and my online research led me to Arts Queensland’s Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant, run in conjunction with local councils. As a Buderim resident, my relevant administering body was the Sunshine Coast Regional Council. I went to their website, and followed the links relating to grants. There are 51 councils supporting this program statewide, so there’s a good chance it’ll be offered in your area [if you’re resident in QLD].
An RADF grant assists artists who need to attend professional development seminars, masterclasses, mentorships with recognised peers and placements with cultural organisations. Writers, even unpublished ones, are eligible provided they meet certain criteria.
As far as Sunshine Coast Regional Council applications go, there are no application fees, it’s a user-friendly website, and applicants can add or remove supporting material from the submission before pressing the final Submit button. Having been through the process of successfully winning a grant for $1,300, I can offer these pointers to assist anyone interested in applying:
The first tip is to secure an ABN, which can be obtained online through commercial sites or [through the national registry]. Without an ABN, you will need to find an organisation prepared to act as your supporting body, or auspice. This gets around the problem of not having an ABN but it involves a lot more paperwork.
The second tip is to check eligibility criteria. Make this your priority – without meeting the criteria an application will fail. For Coast residents, it’s a case of visiting the council website, following the RADF links, clicking on Support Material, and scrolling down until you find a link to a document titled RADF eligibility checklist. Provided you satisfy three of the 12 criteria, you’re eligible. Criteria include professional qualifications, the number of hours you devote to writing and your professional association with peers and writing groups.
In this instance, I mentioned my management committee experience with the Sunshine Coast Literary Association, a grassroots writing group. If you have membership with the Australian Society of Authors or the Queensland Writers Centre, mention these connections.
As part of the supporting material, you’ll need to provide a CV. Mine was a one-page document. I included a paragraph summarising my writing experience: eight bullet points describing my journalism experience, a list of competition results for creative writing and my membership with three professional writing organisations. I’d also recommend mentioning any committee experience you have with writing-related groups and any articles you’ve contributed to those organisations. These same organisations may also be able to provide you with supporting material.
When it comes to addressing the questions about your budget, it’s important to show concrete evidence of costs. Choose your preferred airline carrier and follow the online process for garnering quotes. Many Australian rail networks now also provide quotes for rail passes. In my case, I went to Sydney Trains who provide a fare calculator and downloaded the quote as a PDF to attach to my submission.
By far the greatest challenge in applying for an RADF grant is garnering letters of support. If you’re tackling the application in your spare time, allow ample turn-around periods to give people time to respond. In my case I allowed four weeks. I’d also strongly recommend talking to your local council’s grant liaison officer, a support service that’s free. Although I already had one letter of support from Varuna, the council’s grant liaison officer said this wouldn’t be enough; she suggested I set my target at a minimum of five.
The challenge came in asking strangers to donate their time to plough through 300 pages of writing that wasn’t yet at publishable standard. Instead I made up a sampler pack that included excerpts of my work, a bio and a synopsis.
My novel describes the tragic arc of schizophrenia – how it can strike down individuals, and how it affects families and the wider community. Through online networks, I tracked down regional contacts in the field of mental illness. I also wrote to other published writers, including Anne Deveson, Nick Earls and Robin Storey. I got back in touch with Pan Macmillan, who had turned down the manuscript, saying ‘It’s got promise, but you need to coax it along with a Varuna fellowship’. I emailed the relevant publisher and she kindly formalised this sentiment in a letter of support.
The council’s letter of acceptance arrived in timely fashion. The grant covered 65 percent of costs, the maximum allowable rate. My husband held to his promise of caring for the kids and I fastened my seatbelt for the free journey south to the Blue Mountains, glad the hard work had paid off, singing my partner’s praises, and boasting to southerners that Queenslanders were lucky to have a program like this.
Alison Quigley, from Buderim, is an award-winning short story writer, and secretary of the Sunshine Coast Literary Association. She has a creative writing master’s degree from the University of Queensland and is writing a novel about schizophrenia, set in Brisbane in the 1970s. Her manuscript, working title In Two Minds, has attracted an ASA mentorship, a Varuna retreat, and made the short-list for the Varuna Publisher Introduction Program.
Further information for Queensland residents:
Regional Arts Development Fund, www.arts.qld.gov.au/funding/radf.html
Editor’s note: Writers in other states are advised to check suburban libraries, the local council and state government websites for similar development programs and/or support mechanisms. The ASA and the Copyright Agency also administer various awards, grants and programs designed to assist both emerging and established authors. Good luck!