Writers who are serious about improving their craft will read books, follow writing blogs, attend conferences, take courses, and much more. At Writer’s Relief, we know there is also a simple yet powerful thing you can do every day to improve your writing: Write one sentence a day in a journal. Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Cheryl Strayed, and many other authors wrote in their journals regularly. While it might not sound like much, the habit of writing even one sentence every day can help you focus your creative energy. Plus, when you know you only have to write one sentence, even when you’re tired, uninspired, or busy, you’ll be less likely to skip a day!

Why You Should Write One Sentence A Day

Provides Mental Exercise

Writing one sentence every day is a great way to stimulate your brain. After a long day at work, it’s easy to fall into the trap of mind-numbing channel-surfing or doom-scrolling through social media. Instead, use some writing prompts or writing exercises to challenge your mind and your writing skills. One sentence may soon lead to another, and another, and become a new short story, essay, poem, or book idea!

You can find writing prompts to challenge your writing skills here.

Helps Improve Technique

As writers, we’re constantly looking for innovative, interesting ways to freshen archetypes and tropes. By choosing to write a little every day, you’re allowing yourself the freedom to try new words, phrasings, characters, and more. Because you’re not making a big, hours-long investment of your time, you won’t be as attached to your sentence and can easily toss aside what doesn’t work to pursue ideas that show promise.

Creates Consistency

It’s easy to let the busyness of everyday life push your writing time to the back burner. But soon one day becomes one week, which becomes one month. Before you know it, you haven’t written anything in ages, and your muse has wandered off. By committing to taking just a few moments each day to jot down one sentence, you’ll prevent writing from falling by the wayside. And when you’re ready to spend more time writing, you won’t be rusty—you’ll be primed with some great inspiration from your daily writing!

Offers Stress Relief

Did you have a rough day at work? Was that playdate a disaster? Write about it! Writing provides a therapeutic outlet to deal with daily stress. Write about how you might handle that situation next time, or create an alternate ending! Getting your thoughts on the page helps you from keeping those negative emotions bottled up.

Conquers Writer’s Block

When you’re struggling with character development, trying to patch a plot hole, or can’t get the verses of your poem to flow—take a break! Don’t write about your current project. Instead, write one sentence on a totally different topic. You might unlock an idea or option you hadn’t considered previously.

By making a habit of using prompts, writing exercises, and daily events to write a few words in your journal each day, at the end of the month, you may have thirty new ideas that can inspire your writing—or perhaps the first thirty sentences of your next project!

Question: Would you use writing prompts or the day’s events to inspire your daily sentence?