It wasn't always this way.

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During my postdoc and as a staff scientist, grants were the thing I did after everything else. My days went to experiments, lab meetings, and more experiments. My nights went to the proposal, always written at the 11th hour.

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Few scientists are ever taught another way. The prevailing model, in which one tired person assembles a federal application alone at midnight, has garnered surprisingly little skepticism. In my view, it misses the point.

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A grant is a team sport and it requires much more mental effort than whatever is left past midnight.

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So I flipped it around. I did the thinking and the envisioning first, before I wrote a word. I got to spend my days, essentially, daydreaming about what the science could become. I loved that.

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But no one can do it all. The experiments still have to run, and a grant requires much more mental effort than whatever is left past midnight. It is a team sport, and you need someone working alongside you.

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Here in San Francisco, I became that someone. Colleagues and connections began asking how to put together a strong application, and I worked through it with them, one grant at a time. One application became several, and the requests accrued. 

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I have been writing in earnest ever since.

I have been writing grants in earnest ever since.