I remember the initial application to the PhD as being quite similar to the adrenal function test I had last year - it was incredibly uncomfortable, lots of blood was drawn, and no one gave me fair warning as to what I was expected to do. So by contrast, the application for funding that I wrote this year has already been a raving success.
The project has had a general shape for a while - in my head. The bibliography has been added to haphazardly as my supervisors told me to go read things, and the novel has wiggled around in its larval stage, with sticky notes marking the passages that I need to fact check when I find the inclination.
Then the funding application was due.
You can't be vague when you're asking people for money.
In the two weeks that it took me to write the proposal I went from having vague ideas as to what I was doing to having a battle plan. There are stages. And footnotes. And self-imposed deadlines. Even if they don't fund me, the proposal was worth writing because I now know exactly what I am doing and exactly what needs to come next. Unfortunately, the actual work has been semi-derailed by the impending Upgrade Panel, which is essentially a mini viva in which you convince a gaggle of professors that you're progressing well and are generally fit to continue. If you pass, they leave you alone to get on with it, which is what I really want.
The upgrade is supposed to take place at the end of May, so I'm detouring from the actual next step of the project (which involves school board records, spread sheets, and quietly learning how to use Excel without anyone realizing that I have no idea how it works) and skipping ahead to produce a section of edited novel and a chunk of write-up so they can cross-examine me on their content and assure themselves that I'm competent to be allowed to keep at it.
Henry gets to see a decent-sized bit of the novel draft for the first time next week. Somehow I've made twenty thousand words of it happen, and every word has drawn blood. It's too sad. It's too personal. It cuts too deep. Which probably means that he'll tell me to go and torture my characters a bit more.
