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Photographer Walker Evans said, \u201cStare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."\n\nPay attention to this world. Learn something. And then, I might add, give it away. Before you die. Because life is short and there\u2019s so much to say.\nStare\nWe writers join the photographers and fine artists and children as the watchers, staring at the world around us, noticing what others brush past or ignore.\n\nWe\u2019re the ones who see and take note. We pry, listen, eavesdrop. We press in and push out, serving as a conduit of whatever truth we\u2019ve taken in.\nShare\nWhatever you learn, whatever you know, whatever you see and hear, write it. Share it. Pass it on.\n\nYou have stories to tell that only you can tell because you were the one who was there\u2014you were the one who took time to notice and see what others missed.\n\nWe stare a long time and sometimes stand up, walk to another location to gain a different perspective, and stare even longer\u2014this time from that other angle.\n\nCapture it. Verify, as much as possible. And bear witness with honesty and humility.\n\nWe play with words as we tell the truth. We may speak truth others can\u2019t articulate on their own, or we speak truth others can\u2019t bring themselves to utter. We often speak the truth others can't quite wrap their minds around, but when they see it, read it, hear it, they\u2019ll \u201cget it.\u201d\n\nAll because we stopped to stare. All because we were willing to share.\nThe Unexpected in the Everyday\nSophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now, respond in part to the Walker Evans quote, as they describe the work of street photographers in terms that sound something like the work of writers. They say:\nStreet photographers elevate the commonplace and familiar into something mythical and even heroic. They thrive on the unexpected, seeing the street as a theatre of endless possibilities, the cast list never fixed until the shutter is pressed. They stare, they pry, they listen and they eavesdrop, and in doing so they hold up a mirror to the kind of societies we are making for ourselves. At a time when fewer and fewer of the images we see are honest representations of real life, their work is more vital than ever. (excerpted in\xa0The Telegraph)\nWe writers can do the same kind of work as the street photographers. When we do, we elevate the commonplace and familiar into something bigger, even \u201cmythical\u201d or \u201cheroic.\u201d We, too, thrive on the unexpected in the everyday. Our work, too, is more vital than ever.\nMake Much of What Others Pass By\nDinty Moore of Brevity Magazine tweeted a quote from Steven Church, who said:\xa0"I think our obligation as essayists is to make too much of things that other people wouldn\u2019t make much of."\n\nEssayists, poets, novelists, memoirists: look around. In the commonplace, familiar world we inhabit, we see the bigger themes, the more profound truths, the window into what our world is becoming. We do this, in part, by noting what some small piece of it has become. We make much of things others pass right by.\n\nEvery writer can learn from the street photographers.\n\nWe can learn to stare. Pry. Eavesdrop.\n\nTake it all in. Use every sense. Take it all in and get it all down, even if you don\u2019t write about it until a week later, a month later, a year later. But don\u2019t wait too long.\nHelp the World Begin to See\nIn the play Our Town, the character Emily is speaking to her loved ones when she says, "I love you all, everything. - I cant look at everything hard enough.\u201d Her monologue models attention to detail and inspires every theatergoer, every writer\u2014every human being\u2014to do the same.\n\nShe cries out to her family to look at each other. She realizes too late how fast life goes, how we don\u2019t have time\u2014or take time\u2014to look at one another.\n\n"All that was going on in life and we never noticed,\u201d she says.\n\nShe takes one last look as she says goodbye to the world\u2014to the town,