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Try it.
Assignment:
With notebook in hand, visit a place that means something to you. Once settled in your place, using your notebook or journal to record your impressions,
begin to describe this place by using your senses. How does it feel? What does it smell like? What are the colors? In your notes be as detailed as possible.
Also, don’t be afraid to synthesize your responses. Sometimes a color that you see also has a taste or smell. Experiment. Feel the air on your skin.
Hear it as it crosses your neck.
Along with your description of the place, you might also want to record memories of an important event or image connected with this place —
if any exist. At any rate, let yourself go freely onto the page. Write all that comes to you. You can always go back and edit later.
Now, using your notes, write a brief personal essay — 250 to 500 words, but no longer — on your relationship with this place. The only requirements for this piece is that you use some sensual descriptions, and that it is no longer than 500 words. (If you find yourself going over the 500 word limit, good, keep writing. When you come to some kind of finish, go back and cut until you’re at, or under, the word limit. This is an excellent exercise in revision that forces you to keep only what you think is the best writing.) Otherwise, there is no right or wrong way to compose this essay.
My attempt:
.......The air cools. The asphalt speaks. Here, the dreams of athletes sit on the wind. The stenches of blocks dangle from the rims.
Voices ricochet. I'm alone now, hours later, just the streetlights and an empty court, but I can still feel the remnants of the game's echoes
bouncing off the walls of nearby houses. When I shut my eyes, sneakers squeak. Men grunt. This was a battlefield.
When I open my eyes, the scuffs on the court look like the decaying marks of old warriors. Tribes were slain here, my friend. Only kings walked away.
.......I take the leather globe from beneath my arm and press it to the court. The sound is Mozart, or Vivaldi on drums. I smile.
I don't mean to. This wasn't a game. This was life, chess, blood.
.......Right here is where I spun on him. Glancing down at the free throw line, I set my feet directly on the spot. Right here I spun, looked at him, left hand finger roll.
SportsCenter Top Ten Play, baby!
.......No cameras out here, chief, but I know God caught it. Gabriel smiled. George Gervin chuckled. Stuart Scott be damned.
I think I heard Jesus, Mary, and Joseph do the wave.
.......They say championship games aren't played on black tar. They say in order to get a ring you need a bright stadium, wooden chairs, box seats, roaring crowds.
They say to be an all star you need a million dollar check, thirty thousand fans, an entourage the size of a Little League soccer team. But right here, the East met the West.
Right here, Game 7 was a doozy. Right here, I bounce a ball in the aftermath-
with a Summer League Championship trophy-
glinting brighter than any ring on any hand in the world.
_____________________________________
The cry I bring down from the hills
__________belongs to a girl still burning
__________inside my head. At daybreak
____________________she burns like a piece of paper. - YK
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