Selecting Paragraph from the book of Creative Nonfiction

Forgetting about Correctness

Grammar, spelling, punctuation. none of these counts in a notebook as long as the writer can read the entries and remember what happened. If others read the notebook, they have no right to ask for clarity, full sentences, or sense. For works -in -progress headed for a public audience, yes. But in a notbook words are private, for the writer only.
In the notebook, we give ourselves permission to play with language in a kind of stream-of -consciousness prose that Peter Elbow calls "free writing" in a headlong , pell-mell rush into unforeseen meaning.

Recording plenty of details
Details, at the heart of all good writing, often fade with memory, so notebook entries need to be filled with specifics that can bring the experience back in all its fullness.

Capturing the small moments
The small moments of our lives- the anomalies the ironies - are often recast in conversation with friends and then forgotten. The notebook preserves them for future use. Even an everyday trip to the supermarket can become a springboard for an essay if you jot down what happened.

i selected above paragraph from Sondra Perl &Mimi Schwartz 'Writing True'
The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction