I announced this news in February on my socials, but I was awared a 2024 Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. I applied once before a few years ago and received a rejection. When the application process came around again last year, I submitted an excerpt from my debut novel ACCURSED SON and an updated resume listing my writing and teaching experience.
On Feb. 20, I received an email from Mid Atlantic Arts congratulating me on receiving a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. After a lengthy dry spell of no writing news, I finally have something to celebrate!
I will use this grant to complete my upcoming novels THE OCEAN HUGS HARD and BLOOD FAMILY. I will hire a developmental editor, purchase business cards and bookmarks, and attend conventions and writing workshops.
I’ve always been a writer. I started writing stories as a kid. In high school I wrote for the student-run literary magazine. In college it was for the campus newspaper. After graduation, I worked for weekly and daily newspapers, writing news, features, and sports stories. I wrote a role-playing game and had it published, along with a dozen short stories, three novels, and a novella.
Despite these accomplishments, I feel like I’m a mediocre hack. I feel my success will never be earned. It’s tough getting a foothold in this industry, but with this fellowship I have a fighting chance.
This fellowship is one of the biggest things to happen to me as a writer. A few months ago I wrote a blog entry about struggling with sadness and feelings of inferiority. Yes, writers get depressed, more often than you think. Sometimes our words don’t resonate as much as we hope, and we’re consigned to a limbo of zero sales and no reviews. The money we spend on marketing yields nothing. Interest in our work dries up. We’re left wondering why readers aren’t talking about our books. We second-guess ourselves. Things get ugly.
I’ve languished in this negative headspace for a long time. I get twinges of regret about my writing; maybe I could’ve written a particular story differently or held back with my style. Maybe I should’ve purged the humor and everything that makes my fiction unique because that won’t sell.
Reducing this negativity and stomping out impostor syndrome and inferiority complex are my writer goals for 2024. This grant will help me get my writing career off the ground, and for that I am truly grateful and humbled.
Eric Avedissian 