I’ve nearly come to the end of my grant period now. I’m rounding out the end of my editing project and the official grant fiscal year ends at the end of January, so it felt like a good time to do a bit of reflection. In all honesty, I had hoped to do more updates throughout the process, but things have been so hectic that it just didn’t happen.

For anyone who’s new to my blog, I applied for and received funding from the Creative Individuals grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2025 so that I could hire an editor to help me with developmental edits for my current WIP. Legally obligated blurb below:

First thing first, I’m so grateful for this grant and what it’s allowed me to do over the past year. I’ve long dreamt of being able to work with a professional editor and there’s just no way I would’ve been able to pay for this without the grant funding. It’s allowed me to make progress with my novel that I never would have been able to before, and I’m so grateful to live in a place that cares for and supports the arts in the way that it does.

That being said, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. While I don’t regret for even a moment applying for or using this funding in the way that I have, there are some things that I wish I had done differently. Top of that list is the issue of payment.

When I made my application for this grant, I really had no idea what I was doing, and I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get it, I didn’t include anything “extra.” I didn’t include anything that I felt like I couldn’t justify needing as part of this project, and, because I always struggle with feelings of inadequacy, that meant I didn’t include any payment for myself in my budget. I told myself, I had a full time job, so how could I justify paying myself for my work as a writer? 

Yeah, in hindsight, it doesn’t really make sense to me either. It’s not like my full time job is paying me for my novel writing, so why shouldn’t my grant? I even got feedback during my initial review from a stern but very kind woman that I needed to take what I do seriously and pay myself for the work I put into it. (Thank you, reviewer. I really needed to hear that. And you were so right.)

The thing is (and this isn’t an excuse, it’s just an explanation of how I got to where I am), I’ve been writing novels for over 20 years. And in that time, my writing has always been viewed by those around me as this fun little hobby I do to pass the time. Not a serious endeavor to be a professional writer. Because what even is that? Very few writers are ever able to make a living off their writing anyway, and, as a society, we treat the arts as something you should just do without expecting to get paid. 

Even when I talk about spending whole weekends writing and being exhausted, I hear things like, “Yeah, but at least you weren’t working.”

Wasn’t I? It certainly felt like it. Since March of this year, I’ve spent all but a handful of weekends writing 4-8 hours a day. That’s between 272-544 hours of work, unpaid. Roughly 1/4 of the hours of a full time job.

All of that being said, I still wouldn’t really know how to pay myself. How much should I pay myself per hour? And how do I estimate ahead of time how many hours I will spend on this project? I certainly didn’t anticipate just how much work I would be putting into it, because I didn’t expect to be able to do two rounds of edits.

And then there’s the taxes of it all. This is still largely a black hole for me, as I won’t know how much my taxes will be affected by this project until the new year, but any significant amount of money paid into taxes because I received this money could put this sort of project out of my reach in the future. Fingers crossed my meticulous record keeping for this helps to off-set some of that.

So, the money side of things remains the biggest stressor for me, but it doesn’t nearly outweigh how good it feels to just be writing regularly again. This project (and my lovely editor) really helped to give me purpose and direction. I only wish it didn’t have to be relegated to the fringes of my life. 

The way things are right now, I’m too exhausted to do any writing after a full day of work, so I’m only able to do any real writing on the weekends. Which is also when everything else in my personal life gets relegated to, for the same reasons. This means writing competes with things like spending time with friends, other hobbies, resting, or even just taking care of chores around the house. After a year of this, I’m feeling pretty haggard, but I hate feeling like I need to drop things from my personal life because my professional life takes too much from me.

Ideally, I would be able to find a happy medium. A part time job that helps me pay the bills, but leaves me time to be a writer (which would, also, ideally, pay me some money and make up for whatever the part time work can’t cover), so that I don’t have to pick and choose the things I get involved in.

But that isn’t really the world we live in, is it? So, for the time being, I’m going to have to make hard decisions about where I want to spend what little spare time I have. Which could mean dropping some of my volunteer work. It also means giving myself less time for rest and recovery, which, as an autistic person, I need more of in order to function properly. 

Which brings me to the other part of this grant project: the community ed class. Again, as a recap for those who may be new to this blog, this grant required me to do a form of community outreach that engaged Minnesotans with my art. I decided to do a community ed class on editing your own writing (you can read the blog version of it here). Even though it was only people I knew that ended up coming to the class, this was still hugely stressful for me. The community ed coordinator really wants me to do more classes, preferably for kids, because they don’t have anyone doing anything in writing, and part of me really wants to do it. I just don’t know if it’s something I can handle right now. In theory, it sounds nice, like a great way to bring in a little bit of extra money and to meet new people in my community. But when I start thinking about the details, it just feels like too much.

But that’s enough focus on what’s stressing me out right now. Let’s talk about the parts of this project that I loved.

Firstly, I adore my editor. I really wish I had the money to keep working with her on the rest of this series. She gets my work style and has been so supportive. Her guidance and insight have helped me see my story in new ways and given me a deeper understanding of what’s happening in the publishing world right now. I just really like her, and I wish I could just keep things going like this.

I’m also a little scared that without this structured guidance, this series is just never going to be finished or no one will ever want to publish it. Mostly, I just really enjoy working with her, and it’s so nice to work with a like-minded person in such a unique way.

And, despite any worries I might have about finishing this project or the stress of keeping up with things, I am really enjoying the process in a way I haven’t since I was in college. I’m seeing my characters become more fleshed out and seeing the world come to life in a way that feels really authentic to me and my writing. Turns out when you write consistently, it’s a lot easier to connect with these things, which is a very “duh” moment, but something that’s hard to maintain all the same, if you don’t have the time and compensation to do so.

Ultimately, I’m really happy with this experience overall. I would love to find more grants or other funding opportunities so that I can keep working with my editor. But I’m still nervous about how all the financial aspects will shake out. Because, at the end of the day, that will be the biggest deciding factor of what I’m able to do in the future. Either way, I’ll keep chipping away at this series, and hopefully some day, I’ll be able to see it in print.