Ways to Listen to the World

The journals I keep these days aren't records of my life, but I sometimes jot down notes of sights or incidents that touch me for reasons I can't always know. Sometimes we're lucky enough to have someone tell a short story, perhaps just a sentence, that goes right to our heart, but often it's what's overheard, an attention to accidents, that give me what I need for a book. When my husband and I visited our daughter in L.A. this summer, we did some touristy things, some hanging out, and I wrot...