Every month the Writer’s Group I attend sets a little exercise aimed at improving aspects of our creative writing. This month the challenge was to answer these questions about a photograph, in about 200 words:
1. Who is the woman in black? 2. Where is she? 3. What year is it? 4. What is she thinking? 5. What will happen to her?
Writing short fiction is an excellent tool to hone a writer’s ability to be economical with words. Every single word in the text must have a purpose, or be cut. Here is my entry…
A woman can not be too careful, these days. One cannot even enjoy a stroll beside the Champs-Élysées without the stomp of Nazi boots disrupting the peace. Everywhere I go suspicious eyes bore into me. If it is not soldiers searching for the Résistance, it is my own countrymen who shake in fear, seeing collaborators around every corner. What is to become of us? My beloved city has been claimed by a monster and we are too afraid to do anything about it. That is… most are. When one has already lost everyone who matters, one’s fear subsides. They have no more hold over me. Jean-Luc and little Marie are but ghosts in the rubble now. It does not matter who drops the bombs; they kill, regardless and someone must do something to end the madness. So tomorrow I will return to the café where the German pig drinks his wine. I will smile through his lecherous advances and laugh at his peasant humor, and later in the privacy of his quarters I will plunge my dagger deep into his heart. Perhaps he will see me remove the codes from his bureau before he expires; perhaps not. It is of no consequence. I only pray that Marcel can transfer them safely to the Americans. They have already rescued Normandy. Please, God, let them reach us soon.
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