So, I’d applied for a grant to write a novel about this guy who totally fucking sucks. I didn’t expect to get the grant, for which I’d applied for $10,000. This wasn’t my first rodeo. No sir.
While chipping away at my day job, I’d applied for plenty of ‘em. Mostly, these were flights of fancy, things I dreamed up while punching the information required of me at work into the data management system. Ideas to keep me going through the monotony, a means of tricking myself into thinking I was still flexing my creative muscles, without having to fully commit. Projects that eventually fizzled out to nothing, such as:
– A story-cycle about the intergenerational trauma of a settler-colonial family played out as the family splinters due to a lack of proper estate planning re: the family cottage;
– A novel about a family of Big Feet who walk among us, as contributing members of modern society, etc, told via 100 pieces of flash fiction;
– A separate project to turn those 100 vignettes into post-cards, with accompanying illustrations by yours truly, which would be sent to prominent Canadians to mark the nation’s sesquicentennial;
– A bunch of other horseshit.
My lone success was for $1,000 of professional development, which had gone back into registration fees for a conference that was run, in part, by the agency which provided the grant in the first place. We all know how this works, eh? Still, a grand is a grand, a grant a grant, etc. Besides, I was told professional development looks great on future grant applications. Which, I suppose, may well be true.
I didn’t expect shit from the application for support to write a novel about a guy who totally fuckin’ sucks, though. But I went through the motions, drafting my artistic vision, supporting documentation, how the project fits into my overall artistic development, all that stuff, because I’d always been told that if you don’t play the game, you can’t expect to win. Like buying lottery tickets, or dating. Same shit, different pile, right? If nothing else, it distracted me from actually writing the novel about the guy who totally fuckin’ sucks.
But then I got the fuckin’ grant.
Holy shit, I said, sitting in my cubicle after opening the email, reading it once, then reading it again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t.
Dear Sir, the email from the granting org read. We are so pleased to offer our congratulations on your successful application to an artist creation grant. The granting committee felt your project had everything they were looking for in a project to support: a bold vision, a strong theme and central character, and a willingness not only to touch upon a collection nerve, but to stomp on it! In short, chutzpah! Well done! While the committee recognizes that you are an emerging artist, your history of professional development gives us confidence in your ability to complete the project as outlined. A funding agreement has been sent to your home address, along with the first installment of the funds agreed upon. The balance will be sent when your first draft has been submitted. All the best, The Committee.
Holy shit, my wife said when I called her to tell her the good news. That’s great! And totally unexpected!
Well, I said. Not totally unexpected.
But didn’t you say you didn’t expect anything from applying? That you were doing it more, like, a joke?
Well, I said. Not exactly, like, a joke…
You said there are already a million novels about a guy who totally fuckin’ sucks, why would they give me any money to write another one, unless what they really want to fund is more of something they already know they like?
See, I said, I did say that. But that was the joke part.
Oh, my wife said.
Let me tell you, buddy, I was thrilled. Thrilled. But I also didn’t quite believe it. Until I got the funding agreement in the mail, with a cheque for $5,000. I signed the agreement, scanned it with my phone, sent it in licketysplit, then headed straight for the bank to put that money in before they reconsidered. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually written anything that I hadn’t already provided for the grant application — the first chapter, a stand-alone short story, really.
Big whoop, I figured. I could whip up 60,000 more words about a guy who totally fuckin’ sucks in my sleep, now that I had the promise of $10,000 dangling over my head. That might not be make-or-break money, but ten grand is still ten grand! Besides, I know plenty of guys who totally fuckin’ suck, present company included. You can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a half dozen. This, I thought, would be a piece of frickin’ cake. Besides, it’s not like anyone has to publish the dang thing anyhow. So long as I could submit a draft to the granting agency six months from now, that moolah is as good as mine.
Who knows, I told myself, whistling as I drove across town to the branch I usually dealt with, maybe something might even come of this little endeavour? Maybe the book would actually be good?
But when I got to the bank, the lady at the till said, Excuse me, Mr. Bilnie? This cheque isn’t written out to you.
I took the cheque back, looked it over close. Sure enough, the granting agency had addressed it to my real name. Or, as the goddamn computer would have it, my old name. When I’d made the application, then promptly forgot about it, this whole Bilnie business with the computers and their hive mind hadn’t even been a thing. I laughed, explained the situation to the woman at the counter — the mishap at work with the new operating system, the computers talking to each other, them all thinking my name was Slulder Bilnie, now, haha, stupid computers — but she just shrugged.
Sorry Mr. Bilnie, she said. But I can’t deposit someone else’s cheque into your account.
I left the bank in a huff, got back into my car, and called the granting agency. Surely, I figured, they would see the little pickle I was in for what it was, and we could square everything away.
Whoa whoa whoa, gal from the granting agency said. You’re telling me you’re not the same guy who made the successful application for funding for the novel — which we loved, by the way — about the guy who totally fuckin’ sucks?
No no no, I said. That is me. I am the guy writing that novel about the guy who totally sucks, 110 per cent. The problem is the bank, my work, the hockey app, heck even my family, somedays, doesn’t think so. They think I’m Slulder Bilnie, now.
Well, sir, granting gal said. I’m not sure how that’s any of our concern.
So I went over it all again with her, but we were getting nowhere.
That doesn’t make sense, granting gal said.
I agreed, wholeheartedly. But to move things along, I suggested that the granting agency could just cut a new cheque, rip this one up, and address the new one to Slulder Bilnie.
Just to make things easier at the bank, I said. This is all just one big mix up.
But we didn’t enter into a funding agreement with Slulder Bilnie, granting gal said. For one thing, this Bilnie hasn’t completed the professional development that you have. Or, have they?
It’s me, I said. I’m Slulder. Slulder is me. We’re the same friggin’ guy!
Not according to our records you aren’t, gal said. You, on the other hand, have a long track record with the granting agency. We don’t just hand out cheques willynilly to any Johnny Come Lately over here. I suggest you resolve things with your bank, respectfully, and get to work on that novel, sir.
After hanging up, I sat there in my car, exhaust fogging up the frigid afternoon parking lot among the dozens of other idling cars, staring up at the bleak white sky. Colder than Mars, the radio had said earlier that morning. I believed it. I pulled out a pen from my glovebox, warmed it in my palm and with my breath until the ink thawed. I signed my name on the back of the check, walked into the bank, and used the machine to deposit the grant money into my — into Slulder’s — account. Then I drove home, dusted off my laptop, and got writing.
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Sheldon Birnie is a writer, reporter, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand. Find him online @badguybirnie
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image: Unfinished George 1796 Finished 2022 by Paul Minotto.
Rejection Letters 