JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

We can’t travel just yet, but until then we have our stories. Our first Writing Boot Camp for 2021: Travel Stories. Three sessions in February, Saturdays from 3-6pm on Zoom. Early bird rate until January 30: Php5,000. DM @jessicazafrascats or email saffron.safin@gmail.com to book your place

*No writing experience necessary.
**No one has ever had a nervous breakdown at Writing Boot Camp, although there was much therapeutic weeping at the Memoirs workshop last year.
***Gift certificates available if you want to give the workshop to someone for Lunar New Year.

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 Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp. Oct 10, 17, 24, 31. Four sessions from 3-5pm on Zoom. Fee: Php10,000. Early bird rate: P5,000 if you pay before Sept 10. Email us at saffron.safin@gmail.com to book your place.

You’ve been doing a lot of thinking in isolation. About who you are and the face you show the world. About your old life and what your new life might look like. About how you got to this point, and where you want to go next. About the times when you were happy or miserable or yearning or fed up, but never stopped to figure out what was really going on.

Write it all down.

Sign up for Jessica Zafra’s Online Writing Boot Camp. Saturday afternoons, 3-5pm from August 8 to 29. The objective is to finish writing a personal memoir by the end of the sessions. Workshop fee: P10,000. Early bird offer until July 5: P5,000. Email saffron.safin@gmail.com for details.

Participants have to be over 21. No writing experience required. No one has ever had a nervous breakdown at our workshops.

*which has been postponed while the Ateneo campus is in lockdown as a COVID-19 prevention measure. NO, WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING MORE APPLICATIONS.

1. People love romantic stories. No problem with that, except that they want to write the same stories over and over and over. I suppose it’s therapy: everyone wants to get over romantic disappointment by rewriting their history, but please, I beg you, give your characters a personality and a life. “A life” means there is more going on in their day-to-day existence than moping over their beloved, talking about their beloved, wondering if they should send a message to their beloved, and boring everyone into a coma about their beloved. All romances are similar, it’s the characters who make them interesting. No character, no point. I don’t want to read about relationships where the only problem is that they’re wimps (torpe).
(more…)

Time to write your story before we all run out of time.

Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp consists of two Saturday sessions from 1-4pm. The Nexus Center is at 1010 Metropolitan Avenue, Makati.

On March 21 we will discuss the writing process, do writing exercises, and plan what you’re going to write.

On March 28 you will present your first draft for analysis and comments.

It’s easier than you think, and it makes for good therapy. (And no one has ever had a nervous breakdown in our workshops. I don’t believe in crushing your ego, the world will do it soon enough.)

Cost: P10,000 including snacks.

Early bird rate if you enroll before Feb 15: P8,500.

You have to be over 21 to join this workshop.

To book a place, email saffron.safin@gmail.com.

We will accept only 30 participants.

Thank you for a good year. The world is on fire and going bonkers, but it’s comforting to know that there are humans who think, read, and want to understand. Thank you for being alive! We have something for you.

Start the new year with a fresh outlook. Come to our Free Sanity Maintenance Workshop on Saturday, 11 January 2020, 2-6pm at the Nexus Center, 1010 Metropolitan Avenue, Makati.

2-4pm Lord Fernandez on Mindfulness–what it is, how to practice it, and how it helps clear the noise from your head.

4-6pm Jessica Zafra on Writing–how to stop procrastinating and actually write something.

We hope you can join us. Parking is available. DM us @jessicazafrascats to reserve a seat.