Author's Corner - Write What You Know

This post may seem to contradict my earlier post about going outside your comfort zone, but there is a reason that people tell you to write what you know.

No one can describe places the way you can, because no one has experienced those places the way you have. No one can describe your hometown the way you can, because you know about that dent in your favorite park bench from that hail storm when you were 11, and you know the quiet urgency of an early morning in the Taco Deli drive thru on your way to dance practice, and you know how the cry of your little brother after he broke his arm reverberated through the culdesac and made Tommy poke his head out from behind his mother's dress to see what was going on.

Write what you know.

Write what you see.

Write what you feel.

Because you are the only one who can.

For a writing journal prompt at the start of one of my classes, we wrote about a place we knew, just anything about it. I found myself writing about Austin, Texas, my hometown and where I have the most memories. I hope you enjoy my jots of what I miss most:

 

     What I miss most about Austin, Texas is threefold.

     First, I miss the rainstorms - huge thundering clouds that dumped sheets, buckets, waterfalls of rain, so fast and full that the sidewalks and streets would almost instantly be covered in a film of water. Gutters would roar as they emptied; the windows would shake from the thunder. Sometimes the lights would flicker or go off all together.

     I miss dancing in the rain. In the summertime, when our front yard became a marsh and the sloped street by our house became a water slide, I would run out the door and spin and skip and splash in the rain. Sometimes I danced even when lightning made spidery cracks in the clouds as far as the eye could see. Even walking (no - sprinting, sashaying, skipping, dashing) to my car from the grocery store was a dance. I would pull myself into the car, shut the door, and just sit there grinning until the drips from my hair and face and clothes darkened my seat.

     Second, I miss the food - loud, deep, warm, rich, exciting food with character, food that was matched in stature only by the great Lone Star herself.

     There was Rudy's - a place that looked to be hardly more than a gas station, but a place lit with friendly warmth and saturated in the smell of sizzling beef.The best brisket in the world was served there, along with potatoes that dripped butter and creamed corn so sweet, it was dessert. I would take our wax paper sheet full of freshly cut brisket, a whole loaf of pillowy bread, styrofoam tubs of potatoes and corn, and sit at the huge picnic-style table, ready to douse my sandwich in the one and only Rudy's BBQ sauce.

     There was Chuy's - a place where the colorful eccentric atmosphere mirrored the colorful eccentric people that came through the doors and inhaled the sweet smell of queso and fresh tortillas. I remember returning to Texas one summer, sitting down for my favorite: Chuy's enchiladas, and actually tearing up as I took a sweet bite full of hot chicken, cilantro-lime rice, gooey cheese, and creamy sauce.

     Third, I miss the wildflowers. I would grin all throughout March as I drove anywhere and saw the road lined on both sides with speckles of yellow, red, and purple. My family would take pictures in fields of bluebonnets; everyone else took the exact same pictures, but none of us ever got tired of it. The flowers would spin in the wind, and I would feel joy pulse in my fingertips at just the thought of caressing their soft petals. 
     Nothing gold can stay, and after a matter of weeks, our sweet colorful friends would be gone, and we would wait in careful anticipation for next year, when the thrush-song of rain would pull the colors from the ground once again.