Writing to Win

Writing to Win, Writing with a Purpose

This is the second in a series of posts about what you do if you do not win an award, a grant, or a competition, how one can learn from the process even when the results aren’t what one hoped. The first posting, “When ‘No’ Means ‘Try Again’” can be found at: http://www.hastac.org/node/1230.

If you are a senior person, this isn’t for you. If the Digital Media and Learning Competition, was your first-ever application, perhaps some of these insights will be of interest. These ideas are culled from comments made during the course of two days of judging but are supplemented by my own experiences editing a journal for a decade and also serving on far more judging panels than I can remember plus having had my fair share of rejections over the years. Chalk this up to “Lessons Learned” and I hope they might be of use to HASTAC readers.

Write well: You would be surprised how often judges make the comment that this or that application was written abominably or, conversely, that it communicated well. So many of the DML Competition applications came in during the last hour or two of the Competition. Some read as if they were also written in that last hour—grammatical mistakes, lack of clarity, no focus, no clear communication of what the project was about. Scientists as well as English teachers wanted clear writing, a real sense of purpose and design, objectives and feasibility. You don’t have to write with eloquence (although that never hurts), only clarity. If all else fails, go back to basics. Remember the “5W’s and H” from journalism class: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. If you can’t figure out a more clever way to get your point across, think about that and make sure that, in your abstract or first paragraph, you hit those points. And if you can figure out a way to use the occasional prose felicity (something punchy and compelling), do it! To the judge slogging through a mountain of applications, a winning phrase can make the difference.

Proofread: Yes, I know that my blog posts often contain typos and spelling errors. I do this for free, on my own time, as a public service, and, although I wish my blogs were error-free, that's not going to happen in this lifetime. I live with it. If I'm applying for FUNDING [duh!] I make sure someone who is a far better proofreader than I am double-checks my work. You should too. The underlying point about all of these points is that you are writing for an audience and that audience happens to be deciding whether or not you should be funded. If you don't care enough about your work to proofread for typos or errors, why should they care enough about your work to fund it? The point of all of these points is you want the judges to care enough about your project to fund it. Bottom line. (And, really, I am sorry about the typos in my blog. I do try to catch them all, but life is short . . . Besides, for those reading this blog as an RSS, every time I go back and correct a typo--which I actually do a lot--a message comes saying I've updated my post. That's annoying. So there's a kind of Catch-22 in this blog posting that you don't have. Besides, no one is forced to read my posts. And no one has to fund your project either. If you are applying for an award, you have one goal: winning! Write it Right, as one of the most famous writing teachers of all, Ambrose Bierce, used to say.)

Read well: Leading up to the DML Competition, we posted so many blogs about the ideas foundational to the Digital Media and Learning Competition. We especially stressed the distinction between “digital learning” and “instructional technology” and underscored that our main interest was in participatory, shared, collaborative, learning practices. Since the Competition came to a close, we’ve written many other blogs (“And the Winners Are . . .”) stressing other lessons learned from the Competition. The MacArthur Foundation website is also full of information and now there are the impressive Digital Media and Learning initiative books published by MIT Press, too. Over the course of the year, we will have more and more material available on Digital Learning. Read it all! Take it in! Become familiar with the field, familiar with the concepts, familiar with the goals and objectives. Anyone reading about the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative knows that they are very interested in "building the field." You cannot help build a field unless you understand it. Read. Read widely in the wonderful materials being produced by this Initiative. And make sure your application shows how your project contributes to building this new field. That, after all, is what the competition is for!

Translate: Digital Media and Learning is an interdisciplinary field. That means that, in whatever field or fields you are in, some of your readers are likely to be in other fields. It is your job to be able to translate your specialized knowledge to people across fields. Again, this is not dumbing down. This is writing about your work in a way that has impact even if people do not understand the technology or the science or the implications. You have to be the translator. (You might want to go to the DML Competition winners' pages, linked on the homepage of the HASTAC website, and read the project descriptions. Also, look at the list of the judges. Read about these judges. Now, think about your project and imagine the ways you would "pitch" it to all these different judges at once. Read the descriptions of the winning projects for a concise look at how you might present your own work. Don't copy their descriptions---that's definitely the way of a loser. Instead, take inspiration from a really concise and pointed way of describing a project that may have many subtle, technical, interrelated parts. Think about how your own work can be presented across disciplinary divides, without jargon and, again (I emphasize this a lot), without dumbing-down. If you write a specialized grant application to the funding agency in your specialized field, you can use certain jargon. Here the field is "digital media and learning" and that means you have to translate anything specialized to the multiple disciplinary audiences of this new field. That's the other reason to read in the field. You begin to see how others manage this challenge and that should be inspiring to your own writing.

Focus: The difference between applying for funding (from a grant, competition, or award) and writing up your own work for an article or a book publication is that funders want to see how your work furthers their objectives. So the reason you are “reading well” (see point above) is so that you can make the best possible case that your specific project furthers the goals and objectives that the funders (any funders, in any situation) wish to support in the world. You need to make sure everything in your application underscores the good match between your work and the funders’ objectives. That means when you are making sure your application addresses the “5W’s and H” that the “why” and the “how” (as well as a lot of those other “w’s”) are consistent with the goals of the given competition. This also means that you can’t just recycle from one grant to another—a grant application from another competition dropped in always looks dropped in. Not competitive. You want to actually use the language in the competition announcement in your own grant. This isn’t cynical. As soon as you start using the language, you begin to see where your project fits, where it does not. You hone certain arguments, get rid of others. Not every grant funds every part of a project. Focus on those areas where there is perfect overlap between your work and the objectives of the competition. And don't expect the judges to be able to see connections. YOU need to make them. You need to be explicit about what your project does that will foster the goals of the particular competition. That is your job as a grant-writer. it is not the judges' job to do this for you, especially when you are competing with 1009 other people. You have to make the case. You have to make it convincingly and (I know I've already used this word but it works) in a way that is compelling. (American Heritage Dictionary: Compelling, adj. 1. Urgently requiring attention. 2. Drivingly forceful. Yes. That's what you want.)

Originality: So given all of the above, how in the world can you be original? That is the challenge of any grant. In no way do you want to soft-pedal, underestimate, dumb-down, or try to “fake” content to win a grant. The match has to be intrinsic and real, and the best applications typically not only support the goals of the competition but extend those in new arenas, in new ways, with fresh insights that make the competition even more compelling. A great grant application is one where (even if you don’t win) you end up saying: I learned from the process. If you learned, those reading your application might learn too. And that, after all, is what all of this is about.

Judge Yourself: This is one of the hardest things of all, but try to stand back far enough from your own project to really see what is its most original and compelling feature. Not what you like best, but what will make others go “wow.” In my last post, I suggested a writing group or a writing partner. I underscore, here, that having someone else who is not part of your project read your application before you send it in, someone who you can trust for candor and good sense, is the best way to see if you are really conveying what is best about your project and making the case of what a good fit it is for the competition itself.

Cross Your Fingers: And then, after you've done all these things, after you've written the perfect application, then you cross your fingers and hope. Again, when there is a less than two percent acceptance rate, nothing is certain. So many great proposals don’t get funding at that success rate. So many. But, if you followed all the points above, even if you don’t succeed at this competition, you have learned skills that will serve you in all future competitions. That’s not sour grapes. As with everything else, grant writing is a practice. Consider every application not just as a chance to win—but an opportunity to practice skills until they’re perfect. Or as close to perfection as we're likely to come given all the contingencies.