How to keep a Field Notebook: Cherish the Oddities

Here is a lovely passage from Enid Bagnold on the value of catching chance particulars on the page:

 To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.

Bagnold, a nurse and driver in France during World War I, wrote a diary of her youthful experiences entitled A Diary Without Dates.  She is also the author of National Velvet, The Chalk Garden, and many other autobiographical, fictional, and theatrical works.