Objectives:
We consider how to effectively craft grant proposals and in the process overcome the fear of writing them. This seminar provides you with strategies to effectively start, keep, and finish writing your grant proposal. We look at how to motivate yourself to write, how to move from your idea to proposal, how to create clarity and flow in your writing, how to find and strengthen the structure of your drafts, and how to review your own writing so that it meets the needs of your proposal readers.
Content:
- The proposal writing process and your own writing style. Overcoming writer's block and motivating your writing. Making writing part of your daily research.
- Meeting the needs of a grant proposal reader. Reader versus writer-oriented scientific text and how to motivate your reader.
- Contrasting weak and strong grant proposal writing; turning weak into strong and common shortcomings and how to avoid them.
- Strategies for crafting your draft and finding your storyline: focused freewriting, ABT, outlining, speedwriting, storyboarding, and reverse engineering text.
- How to write clear, concise, and compelling sentences that communicate your ideas and persuade your readers.
- Solving flow problems: the secrets to creating smooth, readable texts that guide readers from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, and section to section.
- Framing knowledge: structuring information effectively at the document level and making structure explicit.
- Strategies for revising: seeing your own writing as a reader does, self-diagnosing problems, and giving feedback when writing collaboratively.
Methods:
PowerPoint presentation, discussion, pair and group work, text analysis, hands-on writing exercises, and self and peer review
Group size: max. 12 participants
The workshop will take place online via ZOOM.