Entries in the Category "a"
Upcoming Holiday
Well, it has just dawned on me that there will be three holidays between now and when this grant application in due on March 5th (actually it is due into our research office for electronic posting about February 22 – which is why I started writing the grant now. I think it takes 3 months to write a good grant – and I am an experienced grant writer.). But, back to the holiday issue – there is no good time to write a grant. It is a problem at the beginning of a semester, the end of a semester, summer, family weddings, vacations, etc. So, I guess winter holidays as a competing activity for my time is as good as any other time of the year. And – let’s face it, when you live in Cleveland, you might as well be writing a grant during the cold, dark days of winter as doing anything else.
I do need a strategy for writing during the holidays, however. I could be guilty of either not working enough on the grant or not spending enough time with the family because of the grant. So, I need a plan for how to get both in. My rough plan for Thanksgiving is to not write on the grant on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but to write at least some of one day of the weekend. That should keep me in the FLOW, but not overtake my holiday. I’ll have to give some thought about how to work with Christmas. (You’ll note I did not say “Christmas break” - as I really don’t take much of a break when I have a grant needing to be done in February).
Anyway, really good news is that my daughter is coming home from college tonight. That is always good family time. I cook for about 25 people on Thanksgiving. Actually, it is a great diversion from the cerebral work of grant writing and I really enjoy it. Now that I think of it, grant writing and preparing Thanksgiving dinner have a lot in common – lots of advance planning and details that have to come together by a deadline.
Who is Shirley Moore, Grant Writer?
Let me share a little about myself. I am a Professor of Nursing and the Associated Dean for Research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I study recovery following cardiac events, with an emphasis on lifestyle change. Most recently I have been conducting trials of interventions to increase lifestyle exercise in cardiac patients. I also direct a P30 Center of Excellence in Self-Management Research and run a T32 Training program for predocs and postdocs. You can read more about me at this website.
I am just finishing a current grant, and the grant application that I am blogging about is a competing continuation of this grant. (Competing continuation applications scare me – Do I have enough data from the current study to go forward in this area? Do I have the right idea to even put forward as the next step? It’s pretty obvious that I need to have a telephone conversation with my NIH program officer to get his opinion. I’ll share in an upcoming posting what I do to prepare for this call.)
Oh, I promised in this posting that I would share my grant writing workplan (timeline) for writing this application. I always do a workplan for each grant that I write. I start with a template and then I personalize it for each project. Here is my template. Here is my draft workplan for this project. I call it a draft workplan because I find myself revising it frequently as I get deeper and deeper into the application. I don’t know what I would do without this workplan, though. It keeps me focused on the right thing at the right time (and prevents me from getting paralyzed when I am overwhelmed). Let me know if you try it and it is helpful to you or if you have suggestions. Remember, you will see this change a lot of the course of the next 3 months as I personalize it more to this project and my progress.