The Pesky Proposal

Today I worked on writing a proposal for a fellowship application due in November. The two main fellowships I am applying for are called dissertation completion fellowships. They pay you so you can focus on finishing your dissertation rather than, say, "wasting" time doing the kind of work people usually pay you for. As you might imagine, these fellowships are very competitive. Of course, the lottery people know what they are talking about when they say that you can't win if you don't play. On the other hand, I don't want to spend too much time working on my applications as it inevitably will take away from the primary writing I need to be doing. So, it's a balance. Good thing I am a libra and therefore extremely adept at balance.
One of the problems I encounter with the proposal writing is the process of writing what you are going to write about without actually having done any of the writing yet. It's a dissertation proposal Catch-22 (apologize to Joseph Heller for the overuse of that particular cliche). I found the process today somewhat helpful, however. As I write and rewrite various drafts of proposals, I understand more what my project is about. I am becoming increasingly focused on the central question I am trying to answer and why this question is so important. It also increases my confidence. I have returned to different forms of the proposal often in the past few months and each time I find I write something very similar. This is a good thing. This to me means that I am committed to my project and that deep inside the little gray folds of my brain it all makes sense, even if sometimes I have trouble spitting it out in actual language that people can understand.
As an aside, I would like to thank iTunes radio for sponsoring the music portion of the day. Great background noise with little distraction. Except for that song that had something to do with stealing someone's baby? Still curious about that one. It's the "Dub Beautiful Collective" in the Ambient section.