Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 4

Sign up for Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp in October: How to Write A Short Story

How to write a short story. How to build characters who breathe. How to create a setting, set a tone, figure out point-of-view. How to invent a plot and ratchet up conflict. How to find your style and discover your voice. Where to get ideas for stories. How to form the habit of writing. Join […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 17 August 2020. A Burning is so urgent and compelling, I thought it was set in Manila.

You are living in a slum with your ailing parents. You work at a shop in a mall, and life is hard but you can support your family and you’re okay. You’ve just bought a smartphone and you can sneak a cigarette now and then. There is a terrorist attack on a train, and because […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 13 August 2020: A strange relationship to privilege

How many times have I thought, “I just want to lie in bed all day reading books”? I’ve been staying at home for five months, and I had not done so. Why? I have the time, I have the books, so yesterday I read all day and night, stopping only to feed cats and self. […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 6 August 2020: Old New Roses

Too lazy to type.

Journal of a Lockdown, 6 April 2020: Old New Roses

Too lazy to type.

Journal of a Lockdown, 1 August 2020

Even if hard lockdown is not reimposed. Even if you’re just getting some air. Even if you feel fine. Only go out if you absolutely have to. “Absolutely” as in you’re running low on food, medicine, and necessities. Nearly everything you need, you can order online. “Our health workers are suffering burnout with seemingly endless […]

Watch our Cineclub Pelikula discussion of El Sur by Victor Erice

Victor Erice, whose first feature was The Spirit of the Beehive, only made one more feature after that: El Sur, based on the novella by Adelaida Garcia Morales, to whom he was married at the time. The movie was planned as a complete adaptation of the novella, but Erice’s producer decided that the movie would […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 21 July 2020: Heretics and spies

Heard about the Giordano Bruno series from S.J. Parris’s guest shot on the Art Detective podcast. Now reading the Elizabethan-era mystery thrillers. Knew very little about Giordano Bruno apart from the manner of his death (burned at the stake at Campo dei Fiori, as stated in the wonderful poem by Czeslaw Milosz). I did some […]

Watch our Cineclub Pelikula discussion of The Holy Innocents by Mario Camus

The Holy Innocents is about a family of serfs living on a hacienda in Zafra, Extremadura in Spain (same region seen in Las Hurdes by Buñuel). The film is based on a novel by Miguel Delibes, and the setting is the 1960s but it could just as well be the 1860s. Thanks to filmmakers Mike […]

Journal of a Lockdown, 15 July 2020. Recommendations for a pandemic

It’s been four months since the virus upended our lives. As apocalypses go, it’s been quiet. Sometimes I don’t speak to another person for days. I force myself to walk 4,000 steps a day indoors. Most days I don’t venture past the parking area of my building. I go downstairs to feed the three garage […]