What Does a Grant Have to Do with Writing

When I first arrived in Canada, I told someone that I had had one book published, and had written for The New York Times. "Oh," she said, "I always wanted to be a writer, but I could never get a grant." I was perplexed. What did getting a grant have to do with putting one's bum on a chair, fingers on keyboard? Later (wiser), I did apply. Again, I was perplexed. The form seemed to have been designed for someone (male) in the 1930s, recently come down from Oxford (or the U of T), with neat little spaces to put in where one had studied, what jobs or teaching positions one had held, what books or papers one had published. Most of the blanks I filled in with "housework" or "nothing."

from "Margaret Atwood and After" by Joan Bodger, National Post Online, March
9, 2002