I turned in my application yesterday for a public art grant that the city is offering. (See here.) Carrie applied as well, and we’re pretty excited. If we’re both accepted, Carrie is going to make a fiber art installation, and I’m going to write a short story that I’ll turn into a chapbook with hand-letterpressed covers. I’ll also give a public reading of the story, and put up a WordPress.com site that publishes the story and nothing more.

I’M excited about this story. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. It will be set in our town (hence the application to the city for grant funding), and will feature some of the fantastic character-types I’ve known in the decade I’ve lived here.

SEEING some of these people described in print will have the potential to mystify and confuse the reader. Working with such outlandish material, it may take some doing to create the “vivid and continuous” dream in the reader’s mind that John Gardner describes. The goal is not to distract the reader from that dream with character details or plot dynamics that can’t be believed. I think that’s exactly the sort of challenge that a worthwhile short fiction project poses, and I’m looking forward to it.

CARRIE and I would each be reimbursed for up to a $1,000 in supplies, and would each receive a $500 honorarium. Again, assuming we’re both awarded a grant — and assuming we both complete our projects! — we plan to pool our honoraria and take little Mogs on a long-overdue island vacation.

THE timeline for the application processing is rather drawn out, but I think that by mid-December I should have a good idea of whether we’ve been accepted.