Paying Attention and Writing

October 27, 2025

I’ve kept journals off and on my whole life, but I’d never heard of a one-sentence journal until recently. As a way to write regularly (instead of my typical off-and-on pattern), you impose a one-sentence limit which is supposed to take the pressure off so you write daily.

It’s a great idea, but I was a dismal failure at it. If I sit down to write a journal entry, I have something I need to parse for myself, and one sentence does not allow for much parsing. (It’s not supposed to!)

But it did make me look at journalling options beyond just straight paragraphs, and I hit upon a form that seems to be working for me at least for now. Each morning I write: 3 things I’m grateful for, 3 things I want to do today, one thing I did that was hard the day before, 3 highlights of the day before, and a one sentence prayer for the day. I’ve been doing this for about six months now pretty consistently.

I was talking with a friend about her version of this practice and was intrigued that one of her sentences every evening highlights some sensory experience from the day. She might note the colors of a sunrise or sunset she saw or the crispness of the air when she stepped outside or even the grittiness in her eyes after a sleepless night. The practice, she said, has forced her to pay attention more to the details of her day.

That made me start thinking about how the sensory experiences are what really give life to writing. An author can write, “seeing the bear on the trail made us so nervous,” and I understand their emotion, but I don’t feel it.

However, if the author writes, “my throat closed off when I saw the bear on the trail and I was afraid he could hear my heart pounding,” I can viscerally feel the author’s experience on the trail. I may not have seen a bear on a trail, but I have had that closed-throat feeling about something; I know the level of anxiety the author felt. That detail allows me to connect with the writer.

Even in other genres other than memoir, sensory detail is important. An editor responded to my first manuscript that my story and characters were interesting, but he didn’t feel he’d been to the place I was writing about. It didn’t come alive for him. I hadn’t been to the place I was writing about. The characters were real to me, but the place wasn’t. After I visited my grandmother’s hometown and saw the flowering pecan trees and the wisteria that bloomed everywhere, I could actually include details that made the town come to life.

So, I’ve also made one line of my daily journal a sensory experience. Yesterday, I wrote, “Coziness of a hot cup of coffee while sitting on the sofa with a cat and listening to the rain hit the window.” Today, I’m going to note the lines the neighbor had created in her yard as she raked a thick blanket of leaves to the curb.

The practice has made me pay attention more, and what is writing if not highly nuanced attention?