Vancouver Manuscript Intensive 2010

With Betsy Warland, creative nonfiction and poetry mentor

and guest fiction mentors
Claudia Casper and Shaena Lambert

VMI Student Testimonials

I came to VMI with an almost complete (or so I thought) memoir, and a nagging suspicion that I hadn’t captured the real story. During our first meeting, Betsy, with her sixth sense, identified the missing ingredient and radically changed my focus and direction. It was as if she’d reached over and flipped off my blinders. Each time we met, our discussions took me deeper and deeper into the real guts of my story, my voice became more authentic, and my confidence grew. Armed with specific goals and deadlines and tons of encouragement, I pumped out an additional 156 pages, and my chapter one became chapter thirteen. Now, instead of putting yet another sloppy divorce memoir out into the world, I will be seeking a publisher for my climbing memoir in the new year.
Jan Redford, VMI 2009, Creative Nonfiction

The VMI was one of the most productive writing experiences of my life. The combination of intense and focused individual editing sessions with Betsy alternating with the small-group discussion and commenting, provided a very rich environment for the development of a manuscript. I arrived with an unordered sheaf of poems and left with a manuscript ready to send out. Betsy Warland is an astonishing editor, with a fine eye and ear for seeing what is there as well as what might have been and what might yet be.
David Pimm, VMI 2008, Poetry

VMI gave me what I needed to write and write and write, release stories that buzz like bees inside me, swat away heckling voices that insist on structure first and listen instead to the quiet assurance that structure will emerge from the material and my process. In short, I’ve battled the ghosts of academia past and freed the creative, poetic writer within. Betsy’s insightful useful feedback and guidance brought out the best in me and in a manuscript now ripening to fruition. Even though it was demanding, I enjoyed the process immensely.
Clarissa P. Green, VMI 2009, Creative Nonfiction

I was fortunate enough to be accepted into VMI 2009 with Claudia Caspar as my mentor. Claudia took her mentorship role very seriously. Our group meetings were wonderfully informative. My individual time with her was both stimulating and inspiring. With kindness and encouragement, Claudia was able to pinpoint important issues in my mansucript. Her suggestions were always on point, very insightful and downright brilliant at times. She helped me to further clarify, expand and deepen into the story and the characters. After each and every meeting, I would rush home to write further. During the VMI period, I finished my manuscript, found several amateur editors to give me feedback and rewrote pages and chapters. Her warmth and humour saved me from defeat several times!
Chick Snipper, VMI 2009, Novel

I worked with Claudia Casper on a collection of short stories. She could tell at a glance if the story worked and made practical suggestions in order to improve the piece. Her feedback always made sense. But more than her professional skill, I appreciated her gracious ways and sense of humour. Respectfully, she delved deep into my soul and asked the sensitive questions: why did you write this; what are you trying to say? Her encouragement has spurred me on to continue honing my craft. I would recommend her to a beginner or one who has been writing a long time.
Cullene Bryant, VMI 2009, Short Stories

I reworked my piece of literary fiction, “Cedar and Salmon” under Shaena Lambert's tutorage. She taught me to respect the reader's intuition and to let no word or phrase or scene go unchallenged. I pitched it to www.emmasweeneyagency.com and I have been invited to submit the completed manuscript. An unexpected bonus for participating in VMI 2008 was exposure to peers struggling with similar self-doubts, frustrations and joys.
Louis Druehl, VMI 2008, Novel

What is Vancouver Manuscript Intensive?
V.M.I. was launched by Betsy Warland in 2007. Now, in our forth year, VMI 2010 will begin in early January and run through end of May. VMI is a unique intensive. We read and assess your entire manuscript. Other programs assess it all (giving you only one assessment consult), or read and assess only a portion of it, or read and assess it in installments.

Upon our reading and assessing your manuscript and discussing it in your first consult, you and your mentor will determine a five-month plan for what revisions, reshaping, and new writing is needed .

Betsy is pleased that our VMI 2008 fiction mentor, Shaena Lambert is returning for 2010, as is our 2009 fiction mentor, Claudia Casper. Writers from 2008 and 2009 were very enthusiastic about their working experience with both Shaena and Claudia.

Claudia will work with novel and novella writers.
Claudia’s first novel, The Reconstruction, was published by Penguin Books Canada in 1996 after a bidding war involving 6 of the top publishers in Canada. The Reconstruction was on the MacLean’s Bestseller List for 3 months, sold rights in the US, UK and Germany and was optioned for a film in LA. Her most recent novel, The Continuation of Love by Other Means, also published by Penguin, was nominated for the BC Book Awards’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and received rave reviews. Claudia is working on a third novel, provisionally titled The Rebirth of Allen Quincy . She has also written numerous reviews for The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun, has lectured or read at colleges and universities and writer’s festivals across Canada. A non-fiction story, “Dad’s Place,” appeared in Geist magazine and was selected for Oberon’s anthology, Best Canadian Stories. Please see her blog at: www.claudiacasper.com.

Shaena Lambert will work with short story writers and novelists. Shaena’s 2007 novel Radiance was published to critical acclaim by Random House in Canada and by Virago Press in the United Kingdom. Her book of short stories, The Falling Woman (Random House Canada, 2002), was chosen as a best book by the Globe and Mail, shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and published in Canada, the U.K and Germany. Her stories have appeared in Toronto Life, Image (Dublin), The Journey Prize Anthology and many prominent literary magazines. Shaena has been a mentor in the Humber School for Writers Correspondence Program and VMI.
Please see her website at: www.shaenalambert.com.

Betsy has published ten books of poetry and creative nonfiction. Her forthcoming book Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing is a collection of twenty-four personal essays that will be published by Cormorant Books in 2010. A 12-year writing project, half of these essays map her quest to re-ignite our relationship with the writing materials with which we work with as writers (the computer, the table, the page, the alphabet). The remaining twelve essays explore her concepts about the forces we encounter that throb below the language of craft. Betsy’s most recent books are a long poem and essay on poetry, only this blue (The Mercury Press, 2005), and a memoir, Bloodroot – The Untelling of Motherloss (Sumach Press, 2000). Currently, she writing a lyric prose manuscript entitled Oscar of Between. Betsy has been teaching creative writing nationally and internationally for over twenty-five years and has offered a manuscript consulting service for emerging writers and authors fot the past seventeen years. She is the Director of The Writer’s Studio at S.F.U. and of V.M.I. Please see her website at: www.betsywarland.com.

Writers and authors with whom Betsy, Shaena and Claudia have done manuscript development, have gone on to publish books, and to win, or be short-listed for, such prizes as the B.C. Book Award, The City of Victoria Butler Award, the CBC Literary Competition, the Surrey Writers’ Guild International Competition, the Trillium Book Award of Toronto, the Griffin Award, the Maritimes Poets’ Corner Award, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Canadian Jewish Award in Poetry.

Betsy will work with poetry, creative nonfiction; poetry; cross-genre narratives, experimental fiction, and lyric prose.

Please note that a second poetry and/or creative nonfiction mentor may be added to our 2010 mentor faculty, depending on accepted applicants’ genres.

Claudia will work the novels and novellas .

Shaena will work with short stories and novels.

We will consider offering VMI at a distance for writers who don’t live in Vancouver, as long as they are able to travel to Vancouver for most consults and group meetings.

What does VMI include

• An initial reading and assessment of your manuscript
• Four in-depth manuscript consults with your mentor
• Three group meetings lead by your mentor that focus on questions of craft and structure
• One all-students/mentors’ meeting to discuss writing and professional concerns held in common
• A final progress assessment and plan for how you will proceed
• An all-student public reading given at the end of May
  

Each mentor will accept 4-5 students.

Group meetings will not be workshop sessions but rather discussions led by your mentor about formal and structural concerns, breakthroughs you have had with your manuscript, exploratory writing exercises and discussion on publishing and the business of writing.

VMI APPLICATION DEADLINE and START-UP DATE

APPLICATION DEADLINE: your application must be received by December1st, 2009.

NOTIFICATION BY: Betsy will notify you as to whether you have, or have not, been accepted no later than December 11th, 2009.

TUITION DEADLINE: December 21st, 2009.

START-UP DATE: we will begin arranging individual consults in early January. Our first group meeting will occur in early February. All dates are determined in consultation with you.

Mail your application to:

Betsy Warland
# 105 -1484 Charles Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 2S8

Include in your application:

• a $50 application fee cheque made out to Betsy Warland - this fee is non-refundable but will be credited to your tuition if you are accepted.
• five to seven pages from the beginning of your manuscript, five to seven pages from the middle, and five to seven from its end (total of 20 pages).
• a page summary of how long you have been working on your manuscript, who you have received guidance from about it, how much of it you think you have yet to write, how many drafts you have done (if you have a full manuscript), and what areas you see you need guidance in.

Tuition: $1,700.

If you prefer to pay in installments, Betsy will accept a series of post-dated cheques. Receipts are available.

Please Note: Tuition is non-refundable.