Chance Particulars

"What is especially lovely about this book, aside from its accessibility and art work, is the range of texts that are used. There are classic works of literature, travel writing, memoir; the advice provided is always exemplified."—Matthew Tett, Writing in Education

"Encouraging and intelligent, Taber instructs writers on how using a field notebook can lead to more useful, comprehensive, precise, and vivid notes that will result in fully realized scenes, characters, and settings."—Dinty W. Moore, Ohio University, author of The Mindful Writer

"Chance Particulars is the literary equivalent of a pair of binoculars. It's a guide to paying attention to the concrete, sensory details of experience and the process of getting them down on the page."—James Barilla , University of South Carolina, author of My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It

"Sara Mansfield Taber's Chance Particulars is at once a delicious read and the distilled wisdom of a long-time teacher and virtuoso of the literary memoir. Her powerful lessons will give you rare and vital skills: to be able to read the world around you, and to read other writers, as a writer, that is, with your beadiest conjurer's eye and mammoth heart. This is a book to savor, to engage with, and to reread, again and again."—C. M. Mayo, author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico

"Sara Mansfield Taber has written—in an accessible style and with well-chosen examples—a practical and readable field guide for writers to practice the necessary skills of observation. More than a guide, this is a sketchbook, notebook, and inspirational commonplace book in one, meant to show writers how to make readers walk in their shoes."—Robin Hemley, Yale-NUS College, author of A Field Guide For Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel