We’ve recently changed our Six-Month Intensive to work with your needs. No longer tethered to a January start date, you can apply at any time to begin working on your manuscript with a mentor throughout the year.
This option of 25hrs of intense mentoring in six months is for writers with a solid draft. Here’s what you can anticipate during the course of your program:
In your first contact, you and your mentor will create a feedback structure that suits you both. Each mentorship, like each manuscript, is unique as it is devised by the mentor and mentee together. While the mentor may have certain ways they prefer to work, the mentee is responsible for helping craft and communicate best practices for this exchange. Together, the mentor and mentee decide on a method and schedule of communication (face to face, Zoom, written, phone calls, etc.) and the “way” they will work together. VMI runs on clear and transparent communication and encourages both mentor and mentee to check in with each other to make sure communication is flowing well. At times schedules may need to be adjusted or formats changed, and that is entirely possible with good communication. Within the first weeks of beginning the Intensive, your mentor will read your entire manuscript. We are one of the only programs where a mentor does this up front and find it yields excellent results. 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. You are always welcome to ask for specific feedback about certain areas or topics.
At the 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. The mentor will track their hours and give you a sense early on of their pace “I’ve used three hours of our work so far,” for example, so you can manage your remaining hours well.
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 six mentor-lead drop-in group meetings 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 other writers from the program.
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 Six Month Intensive
- Applications open year round
- Use your 25 hours of mentoring within six months
- Tuition amount: $ 3,580 + GST ($179): $3759
- Tuition due: immediately after mentoring pair is confirmed
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 matching process begins. 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 ****