Here’s what you can anticipate during the course of our six-month program:
By the beginning of December, you’ll learn who your mentor is. Within the first weeks of beginning the Intensive in January, your mentor will read your entire manuscript, or body of work you have written thus far. We are one of the only programs where a mentor does this up front. In your first contact, you and your mentor will create a feedback structure that suits you both. This will include deciding on your method and schedule of communication (face to face, Zoom, written, phone calls, etc.) From there, you can expect mentor feedback to help you understand some of the following: the strongest and most unique focus in your writing; what content fits and what doesn’t; any additional writing that is needed; and what is likely to be the most effective overall structure.
At this first consult, your mentor will also discuss which revision techniques and strategies are best for your manuscript. For example: areas of description that need to be rewritten into dialogue; revising inter-related poems into a suite of poems; creating additional settings and scenes to make your fiction or nonfiction more evocative.
Your mentor will also discuss with you how to structure and schedule your consultations on the manuscript, whether that’s a smaller number of consultations to review large chunks of the writing, or more consults to review smaller portions of the manuscript.
In addition to one-on-one mentoring sessions, you are welcome to a mentor-lead drop-in group meeting every month in which VMI writers can meet one another, share work, do some writing prompts, and learn more about specific craft skills applicable to everyone in the group, or more about the publishing process.
At the conclusion of the program you are invited to participate in a public reading in July with your cohort.
Although VMI mentors will provide you with substantive editing and publishing advice, keep in mind that VMI mentors are not in-house publisher’s editors, copyeditors, nor literary agents. These are distinctly different professions.
Apply for the 2025 VMI Program
- Application deadline: November 9, 2024
- Notifications: November 30, 2024
- Tuition amount: $ 3,580 + GST ($179): $3759
- Tuition due: December 14, 2024
- Course start date: January 2025. This date can be flexible based on your requirements and availability. An orientation online will take place in the first week of January.
Tuition for Vancouver Manuscript Intensive can be paid by e-transfer, and there is an application fee of $52.50 (includes GST).
After the application has been accepted and deemed a good fit, the application fee will be collected and the directors will begin the matching process.
VMI strives to match qualified applicants with mentors interested in their project and available at this time. If, after careful consideration, we are not able to match an applicant with a mentor, the application fee will be returned.
If an applicant, after being presented with a suitable mentor, decides not to accept the match, the application fee will not be returned and the applicant can exit the process.
When you have finished filling in the form, please click on the “Submit Application” button. There may be a delay of up to a minute so please be patient and do not press another button.
***Applications for 2025 are open now until November 9, 2024****