How to organize your deadlines and applications

Let's talk about tools and tricks!

Header illustration by Ludi Leiva.

Oh hi! Wishing you a productive June, BUT ALSO, a restful one.

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives, and this month’s letter.

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😎 June Deadlines 😎

💭 Due 6/15: Open call: Exhibiting Artists’ Books convening

🎨 Due 6/16: APAture Showcase Application (Asian Pacific American emerging artists)

🎨 Due 6/30: Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists

✍🏼 Due 6/30: YesYes Books 2024 Pamet River Prize

💭 Due 6/30: 2025 Centrum Artists-In-Residence program

✍🏼 Due 6/30: The Los Angeles Review writing awards

✍🏼 Due 6/30: Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction

🏖 July Deadlines 🏖

✍🏼 Due 7/1: Peters Valley Fall Guest Artist Residency Program

✍🏼 Due 7/2: Bellevue Literary Review Prizes (for writing on health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body)

🎨 Due 7/2: Penland Resident Artist Program

🎨 Due 7/4: Franklin Furnace Fund – 2024–25 XENO Prize for Artists’ Books

🎨 Due 7/5: The VH AWARD (for emerging media artists who engage with the context of Asia)

🎨 Due 7/6: The Max Thelen Studio Residency (California artists)

🎨 Due 7/11: City of Walnut Creek Public Art RFQ

🎨 Due 7/15: UCross Fellowship for Native American Visual Artists

🎨 Due 7/15: Loghaven Artist Residency (writing, visual arts, dance, theater, music composition, architecture, interdisciplinary work)

✍🏼 Due 7/15: Unleash Work-in-Progress (WIP) Award 2024

🎨 Due 7/16: New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships

🎨 Due 7/20: Queer | Art | Mentorship (film, performance, literature, visual art)

✍🏼 Due 7/21: Wave Hill 2025 Sunroom Project Space

🍁 August Deadlines 🍁

🎨 Due 8/1: Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award (Northwest artists)

🎥 Due 8/1: Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” Grant (for individual woman, non-binary, and/or transgender U.S. filmmaker, age 39 or older, who is working on their first narrative feature)

🎨 Due 8/12: Alternative Exposure Grants (Bay Area visual arts projects)

💭 Applications opening 8/30: The Huntington Museum Fellowships

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I’ve done a similar version of this newsletter topic in the past, but it feels like a good time to do another one. Time management, and energy management, have been on my mind as I prepare for a summer focused on writing, research and learning.

These approaches have helped me recently, so I’m sharing them in case they resonate with you, too.

Notion: Previously, I used a physical planner to plan out both my deadlines and personal schedule. But in the last couple of years, I started using Notion for my freelance deadlines and project ideas. You can find free templates (some cost money) to use, and I currently utilize a few to me my keep notes, deadlines and invoicing information organized. I needed something to help me track my freelance work year by year, and Notion does the trick. If you don’t know where to start, the templates are also a good source of inspiration.

via GIPHY

Google Doc Tools: There are some new (to me) tools in Google Docs now. When you make a blank document, you can choose from smart tools like “Review Tracker,” which I find useful as a visual for your progress. The columns are “reviewer,” “status” and “notes,” but you can change the column names. I find the “status” button especially useful, because give me a quick glance as to where I stand. It’s also satisfying to change the project status to “done” — or whichever word you use to signal when a project is “completed.”

Boomerang (Gmail): I love to schedule emails. If I know I need to draft an email, or a follow-up, but I don’t want it to go out immediately, I use Boomerang to schedule it for the next morning or a few days from now. For example, if I finish drafting a pitch, but it’s late at night, I just paste it into an email for its intended editor and schedule it for the morning. That way, I don’t have to worry about WHERE I left my notes.