Stare - Walker Evans

On Good Writing · Apr 18, 2026 · 7m

In this first episode of On Good Writing, Bret Lott quotes Walker Evans, 20th century American photographer. He invites us to see that a writer or an artist or anyone who wants to make something true and good and beautiful is someone who stares and stares, trying to understand what’s going on, instead of assuming you know. “Assuming shuts down discovery and smothers it,” Bret Lott says, “which will kill a book or a story before the first sentence is ever written.”

Bret Lott is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including the novels Ancient Highway, The Hunt Club, A Song I Knew by Heart…