Exercises In Creative Non-Fiction: Let The Woman Scream
July 14, 2014
I recently finished my 5th semester in a row towards my B.A. in Creative Writing and Digital Age Communication. I’ve written and been published on a variety of topics and subjects over the past decades, but obtaining my B.A. always seemed to allude me.
Now with a few different writing courses under my belt, I am learning to understand my own varied writing styles, techniques, and issues surrounding the ever-present writer’s block. That said, pre-writing practices have become a huge part of my writing process.
This is a piece I wrote a few months ago, for an exercise called “Let The Woman Scream”:
I was standing by the cash register on a cold, quiet winter day pondering the people passing by the large windows in the front of the shop, when suddenly a masked man burst into the store with a pistol in his hand and robbed it.
I was frozen with fear, as the tall, stocky man wearing a black ski mask pointed the gun towards my face and demanded loudly that I hand over all of the cash in the register. I did not stop to ponder his demand, the day was no longer given over to the art of pondering, no the day had swiftly morphed into the art of self-preservation. I swiftly opened the cash register, trembling I pulled the cash out of the drawer, and handed it to the masked man. My hands were shaking, and my mouth was so dry that I could not speak, but as I handed him the cash, I silently prayed that he would understand on this cold winter day that the cash in the drawer was not at all substantial.
The robber spun around swiftly, nearly knocking over a display table of winter boots and he tucked the cash into the pocket of his tattered winter jacket. He burst out the front door of the tiny shoe store and into the cold, blustery winter day. I stood motionless for a moment in time watching the robber flee across the street and into the square. I was so stunned by what had just taken place that I was unable to even reach across the cash desk for the phone. It all seemed so surreal to one moment be pondering the mundane and the next to be robbed at gun point.
Then the reality hit me and seeing that armed robber was safely out of range, I screamed at the top of my lungs and fainted on to the cold hard floor.
This higher education journey I am on at UMass Amherst UWW, comes later in life for me, and it has to date been a challenging, amazing and inspiring experience.
