How to start a new project

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Header illustration by Ludi Leiva.

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My Domestika course, “How to Write a Human Interest Story,” is live! Learn how to prepare to interview a fascinating person, and how to outline a profile article about your subject.

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

🌦 April Deadlines

• ✍🏼 Due 4/7: Triple Canopy Publication Intensive

• ✍🏼 Due 4/15: West Hollywood Open Call for Graphic Artists: Winter Season Artwork

• 🎨 Due 4/16: Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grants

• 🎨 Due 4/18: SOZO Fellowship Pilot (US-based independent artists, preference for performing arts, new media or mixed media)

• 🎭 Due 4/19: Directors Lab West 2024 Summer Intensive (for stage directors and choreographers)

• 🎨 Due 4/26: The City of Burbank Call for Artists: Artistic Shade Structure

  (Johnny Carson Park)

• 🎨 Due 4/29: California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (LA County)

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: Inlandia Institute Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Book Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: AWP HBCU Fellowship Program

• 🎨 Due 4/30: The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture Call for Artists

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: F(r)iction Short Story, Flash Fiction, Poetry Contests

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: Letras Boricuas Fellowship (Puerto Rican writers)

🌷 May Deadlines

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: University of Arkansas Press Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: Martha’s Vineyard Writer Fellowships

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: Foglifter fiction submissions

• 🎨 Due 5/1: Fort Union National Monument October 2024 Artist in Residency (multidisciplinary)

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: 2024 Noemi Press Book Award for Poetry

• 🎨 Due 5/1: West Hollywood Moving Image Media Art Program Prequalified List (RFQ)

• 💭 Due 5/2: 2024 Processing Foundation Fellowship Program (artists, coders, and collectives)

• 🎨 Due 5/6: Marble House Project residency (multidisciplinary)

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Tony Ross Scholarship

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Reporting on Systemic Racism Grant

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Charles M. Rappleye Investigative Journalism Award

• 🎨 Due 5/14: The Hopper Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/19: Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency

• ✍🏼 Due 5/19: CRAFT 2024 Short Fiction Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/30: C New Critics Award for Emerging Art Critics (Canada-based/Canadian)

• 🎨 Due 5/31: Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence (for artists developing new works that address plants, gardens, or landscape)

• 🎨 Due 5/31: Joshua Tree National Park Artist in Residence Program

😎 June Deadlines

• 🎨 Due 6/15: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Emerging Artist Award

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

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This Month’s Note: How to Start a New Project

Hello from month #4 of full-time freelancing. Shifting away from full-time work to full-time freelance has also given me some time to think about other ideas for creative projects. I’m interested in exploring new means of storytelling and connection. But oftentimes, I get in my own way. I want to brainstorm and tinker with an idea before I do anything. And sometimes, I stop myself before I even get started. Because, what if it’s not good enough? What if it kind of sucks?

This newsletter has given me the space to explore and write about topics in a way that’s more conversational. And I’m grateful to have this little space (and grateful to you, for reading!)

I really like this example from Beth Pickens’ “Make Your Art No Matter What” about conquering fear in the creative process. Pickens is a consultant for artists and art organizations, and her book has some really valuable gems.

Here’s one:

“When an artist has difficulty taking any kind of action, I work with them to examine the fear and break down a contrary action into micro-steps. I ask them to imagine themselves as a rock climber on a cliff… Knowing that they need to move, they want to move, and they no longer want to be stuck in this particular spot on the side of the cliff, I ask them to consider this, ‘What would be the smallest step that is movement but still feels safe?’ We parse out the task they are afraid of into the smallest, safest-feeling steps.”

I can often get ahead of myself, and question whether I can produce what I really want to make. Can I make it to that last step? But, the process is just as important. And I’ll never find out if I can create something if I don’t start with, at least, a small step.

I took a class with Sheree L. Greer a little while ago, and Sheree had us tape reminders/mottos to the wall near our desk, or in notebooks, as guideposts during our writing process. One of my chosen mottos was: I allow myself to explore stories — both big and small. I like to think about this in terms of projects and ideas, too.

chicaespinaca via GIPHY

So here I am trying it out myself: I’d like to start a new feature of the newsletter. Subscribers, you’re hearing it here first! I’m working on an audio project where I respond to questions and give pep talks to creatives. Think of it as your resource for getting questions answered. What do you wish you could ask a fellow creative? What’s on your mind regarding your creative process lately? What do you need advice on? Hit REPLY to send your question/pep talk request, so I can include it in the next month’s newsletter as part of this new, shiny project.