We hate it that the magnitude of the Competition overwhelmed our tiny crew (and our heroic, overworked judges) and that we cannot provide individual comments and feedback on proposals that did not receive an award. But we hope to offer some general comments that might be useful to those writing a grant for the first time and we're exploring tools for allowing people to comment on one another's proposals, peer-to-peer. Stay tuned! Over the next several weeks, we will be posting several overviews or suggestions. Just as we wrote four postings on what we learned from reading all the applications, we have some ideas, in general, about applying for this or any competition. We might also see if any of the judges might wish to share a few insights. And we're talking around about tools where people, if they wish, can upload their own applications and put them out there for the public to respond to and give feedback on. If you have suggestions, send them along and we'll consider them.

For now, I'll just offer a few really brief observations of my own--and these apply to this competition, to any competition, to any conference to which you submit a panel or paper proposal, to any journal to which you submit an article. I edited a refereed journal for a decade and have been on both ends of rejection. So these comments come from that bigger perspective, not just from the experience of working on the DML Competition. I offer them in case they might be useful. No one has to agree with them. And many people won't.

But the moral is (don't you hate this?): if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. . . . When it comes to things like competitions and so forth, "no" can mean "why not try again later."

By the way (and this may surprise some people for whom this was a first application to any competition): You never stop being rejected. Hate to sound like a Harvard MBA (ie Getting to Yes---a book I love, by the way), but there is probably a great correlation between the number of one's rejections and the number of one's successes in many cases.

Lesson #1, for me, is thinking of any rejection as a challenge, a way to learn, a way to improve, and then an opportunity to take stock, think of other avenues. And try again. And again. And, sometimes, yet again.

Since we aren't able to give you feedback, I encourage you to solicit from others--it will be lots more detailed than you are likely to receive from an anonymous source. Show your proposal to your most critical friend, someone who does not know about the field, who may not share your intellectual assumptions, and ask for any and every level of criticism. Take it in. Try not to be defensive (this is not easy, by the way). Put the proposal in a drawer. And come back in a month and look at it again. If you have no ideas now about how to write it, redo it, without the pressure of deadlines or judgments looming over head and see if you can now get feedback from the same colleague.

I've been in a writing group (different ones, actually) for many years now and have gotten used to hearing really tough criticism of my work on a weekly basis. I give it too. With my friend, Alice (we try to meet once a week), it would be a betrayal if we didn't give one another our most pointed, considered, and constructive criticism. And sometimes that amounts to "this isn't working." Not easy to hear, but the best training of all. I can't imagine writing, now, without having another pair of eyes (and a very eloquent mouth!) responding. Candor is the thing. And it isn't easy. In fact, the trust that comes with exchanging candid comments is very delicate; it requires honesty but also balance and proportion. And a real sense of the goals that the writer wants to achieve and how the feedback will be useful to those goals.

That's one reason why we won't send applicants the unprocessed and sparse comments from our valiant, overworked judges: "This stinks!" has never helped anyone be a better writer or a better professional. Nor has "Pretty good!" or even "Excellent!" on a proposal that wasn't given an award because there were simply too many proposals in the "Excellent" category.

Having been in writing groups (including some dysfunctional ones), I know that the only thing worse than no feedback is insufficient or poorly thought-out feedback.

So that is Lesson 1 if this was your first competition. Don't give up---but get real, substantive feedback on your proposal from someone whose judgment you trust. If you can find someone with a track record of winning grants who will look at it and offer comments, even better. If there is someone who will give you comments and talk them through with you, really discuss ways you could do better next time, that's priceless. That process will put you in great shape for DML Competition II or any other application.

Lesson 2: After getting turned down for something, I usually smart for a while (don't we all?) but then I try to see if I can understand context, as a historian would say, the bigger picture. For the DML Competition, we wrote those "And the Winners Are" postings to try to give everyone some insights into the process but also the insane odds. We tried to make it clear that no one should take a turn-down personally, not when less than two percent (TWO PERCENT!!!) made it through the unbelievably rigorous competition. If you won, your application was read by 12 separate people, the last panel of whom spent two days talking about your application. A two-percent acceptance rate means lots of great work didn't get funded this time. Maybe next time?

In another post, I'll write about ways to write a great application--but, for now, those are the two things I want to offer. I know these comments will make some people mad. No one wants philosophical blah blah blah after a turn-down. But I hope for some it will be a reminder that rejection (Getting to Yes again) is just part of this game.

Oh, more adages: nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'm sure there are others too. I know people who have a dozen grants applications in play at any given time. If something comes through, they go with that. If something else does, that's what they work on next. I'm not advocating that, but I guess there is some understanding there that, when the odds are small, you maximize your chances by trying lots of things, again and again. I know other people who are wedded to a manuscript they first wrote ten years ago. They can't move off the rejection. That, to me, is the real tragedy.

Do stay tuned. This is a subject we'll be writing about again and again in the next weeks and, as I said, if you have suggestions for online tools where one can solicit community feedback, write a comment below. We're exploring those too.

P.S. And for a second posting about writing for a competition, award, grant, proposal, or any purpose, check out: http://www.hastac.org/node/1237, "Writing to Win, Writing With a Purpose."