The beauty of the messy first grant draft

The beauty of the messy first grant draft

By Patty Sullivan, Relationship Manager

My rough drafts are terrible, and it is a beautiful thing. Grant writing is WRITING; every writer has a process to get the words written in order and into final form. One of my favorite parts of working with the grants team at Write On is our collaborative process of writing, reviewing, rewriting, copyediting, and final drafts for every project. Our process is efficient and effective for our clients and helps us brave neverending tight deadlines. 

But it all starts, in the words of Anne Lamott, with a “shitty first draft.” In my process, writing begins by dumping it all out onto the page. My rough drafts are terrible, and I hate to share them. They don’t make sense or have order. Imagine my delight when I discovered that most of my teammates also start with shitty rough drafts. The coherence and control start when we shape our messes into manageable, readable first drafts.

In grant writing, the rough draft is about research. Starting with a document with all the grant questions, I dump it all in there and then winnow through it to find the best pieces for later drafting. I don’t pause over voice, tense, or length because it will come together later. Free-flowing ideas - no structure, coherence, or order - not grammatically correct (except for auto-correct - a subject for another time). But always including citations in the draft so they will be close at hand later. 

If I try to edit as I create the rough draft, I’ll waste time because some passages will get tossed out later in favor of the best evidence or examples. An aside: grant writers typically save the tossed material in another place, and sometimes, a tidbit will find its way back into an application. Then on to the first draft with improved organization and coherence. Revision at this stage involves cutting out junk or wandering paths that don’t support the logic and argument of the writing assignment. 

Our improved first drafts are shared with team members who review them and also check for the beast that must be tamed: the online application’s character count (yet another subject grant writers discuss frequently). I’ve considered adding my talent for reducing word count without sacrificing meaning to my LinkedIn skills—this is a hard-earned skill.

First drafts are coherent and closer to ready. With a complete first draft, the team can check citations and facts, look at coherence and logic, and move toward the final product on deadline. So, what started as a mess becomes a polished project. But only if I let that shitty rough draft come to life.

Anne Lamott’s iconic essay Shitty First Drafts is in her essential book of essays for writers, Bird by Bird, first published in 1994. The passage that gives the book its name has lived in my head throughout my writing career. Lamott writes about a conversation between her father (also a writer) and her brother. “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”