Help! (Wanna Write an Application For Me?)

Do you want to know something funny? When you tell people that you're a writer, they kind of assume that you can write just about anything. Need a contract drawn up? Well, that person is a writer! They can do it! Need a lease written? Ask the writer! Business email? The writer will whip one up for ya! How about a grant application? Writer! Well, I'm here to tell you that this is very much not true. (At least it isn't for me. If there's some sort of wünderkind out there who can do it all, I very much envy you and hate you at the same time.)

Currently, I am up to my eyeballs in filling out some serious applications. Yes, it has to do with my writing, but writing about my writing? It is both ugh, and help! My problem is that I have this innate need to turn everything into a story. I get descriptive, and flowery, and in the process of using all this lovely language, I lose the focus required to actually answer the question! If this was a story writing competition, I feel it would be in the bag. But it's not. It is my two least favourite things: 

1. Sell us on your work.
2. Sell us on yourself.

So... help! 

Literally a picture of me right now. (It works because he's a writer too!)

So, here I am at my daughter's riding class trying to fill out an... application... and instead turning to this blog to vent my frustration with it. And this is a couple months before I need to turn to *gulp* grant writing! I know there are others out there who feel my pain. How do I condense literally years of writing and rewriting, edits and workshops into little sell yourself bite size businessy quote-ables that fit into boxes that cut you off when you reach an arbitrary character count?

Merida feels my pain about the cutoff.

I don't know how the successful do it! For me, the cutoff comes just as I'm getting to the meat of my point. The I get to do the fun bit. (Said in all sarcasm.) I get to go through what I've written so far, and cut out all the lovely language I've spent ages anguishing over, and make myself sound dry and to the point. They say to kill your darlings, but this feels like a mass murder. By the end of the process, I don't even know if what I've written makes a lick of sense. Also, the applications and grants that don't tell you the word or character counts in the little boxes? I hate those! So you go along writing your answers, thinking "Finally! I can say exactly what I want, how I want!" And then, all of a su-

He gets me. This is me right now.

You see my point? Once, I was writing an answer on one of these things, and I didn't even look at the screen. Just tap tap tapping along, and I didn't even notice it had cut me off. A whole paragraph of text went by, and I hadn't even realized that none of it had registered. I felt mighty stupid that day. 

I really should go back and finish what I started. But thank you for listening to me venting process. Have you dealt with this process? How did you cope with it? Any ideas to help a girl out? I'd love to hear from you.