Last november I wrote a grant application. It turned out that it was for a much larger kind of grant than what I understood when I agreed to do it, which means it was far more work than I anticipated. I basically put the whole month into it. I think I did well, we'll see in a few months, but it got me thinking a lot into how did people that write successful applications learn. There is certainly some natural talent involved, but for sure they must have had a) good teachers and b) lots of trials and errors. Since they say "Knowledge comes from experience, and experience comes from mistakes", I am assuming that last one, although it is clearly difficult to imagine some people not getting a grant approved. Anyway, there must be some big part which is just knowing how to write well (which I try and practice and try some more). However, it is a different kind of writing. This time I had my manuscript read by a lot of people (not just my coauthors), but each person at a different stage of the proposal -- and out of respect to them, only once. This gave me a good deal of feedback, which improved the proposal incredibly. I guess this one is obvious, but consider a friend who was impressed by my asking so many people to read it. He told me he had just submitted a proposal without nobody else reading it -- and it turned out that the referees did not like his presentation. We'll see how mine goes, but I think this is a solid piece of advice: have your drafts read and commented by other people, especially those you respect how they write. This point is important, as I got a lot of positive remarks about the draft from peers, but quite some criticisms from more senior (and good) people. The other advice I didn't quite understand till now was how to the point the proposal has to be. There is less room to wander than in a PRL, really. The words of advice were: military style, almost with the bullet points. I had the bullet points at first, but at the end the text was so intrinsically itemized that I just removed them and nothing changed -- which I loved because really wasn't so in love with the bullets.
So, two points: very straightforward, and ask for comments. I have to leave now, but will continue in the next post with a couple more pointers.

Labels: advice, grants, writing