Thanksgiving has come and gone for the year. That means one thing, that the feast is over and the holidays now have an unstoppable momentum that will swoosh us into the New Year grant season quicker than the wink of Santa’s eye. My Thanksgiving was great, a feast of two types, one gourmand and one of writing.

Every grant writer knows there are seasons for grants. Grant seasons are when agencies issue RFP’s, and these are somewhat predictable. A grant writer in high grant season is like a grizzly in the river catching salmon, there’s lots to eat. In low seasons, the feast is slimmer. Sometimes we’re scrounging around a bit looking for the odd berry, or digging up mushrooms.

Fall is customarily a fallow season for grant writing. This means that the Thanksgiving holiday is normally uninterrupted by work. Unexpectedly though, this past weekend, there was a sudden surge of salmon in the river! I landed a nice contract on Wednesday that was due today! Yes, I had just four days over the Thanksgiving weekend to complete the proposal! A new corporate client in a foreign country requested emergency writing assistance and I thought -JEEPERS! – there’s salmon in the river during off season!

So I did what a hungry grizzly does when confronted with a sudden run of salmon: I dove into the river of course. I engaged immediately with the RFP and developed an outline. Before going to a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, I began to write the narrative. A grizzly doesn’t decide that it would be better to watch four days of televised football and eat potato chips when there are salmon to be caught.

I was too full of turkey to continue writing on Thursday evening so I worked in my office Friday and Saturday. On Sunday I did revisions and took overseas Skype calls from Africa at home and by the afternoon, my client and I put the proposal to rest.  Ahh, a belly full of salmon.

My Thanksgiving was a complete success, I ate turkey with stuffing and I feasted on writing. Here I am on Monday full and satisfied; the fall run of salmon is over for now and I am back in the bushes looking for berries.

Photo Credit – Thomas Picard