Your Life in Six Words

Legend claims that Ernest Hemingway started the six-word novel/memoir craze with For sale: baby shoes, never worn. If the part about him considering it his best work is true, I’d tend to agree. But this isn’t a blog about how much I dislike Hemingway; it’s a blog about the addictiveness of the six-word phenomena. (Also it’s a sneaky way to get other people – like you! – to write my blog for me.)

In 2006 SMITH online magazine hosted a reader contest: Your life story in six words. The site was inundated with entries – 500+ a day, in fact. From this tidal wave of response came the bestselling book Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. (Rachel Fershleiser & Larry Smith, editors. I just can not get the link to work, but you can find it on Amazon.) Three examples from the book:

Nobody cared, then they did. Why?
(Chuck Klosterman, award-winning journalist)
Cursed with cancer. Blessed by friends.
(Hannah Davies, nine-year-old leukemia patient)
Well, I thought it was funny.
(Stephen Colbert, TV personality, humorist)

Since then, many sites have asked their readers (famous and obscure) to post six-word memoirs or novels. One site asked sci-fi/fantasy writers for a futuristic novel in six words. My favorites:

The baby’s blood type? Human. Mostly.
(Orson Scott Card)
Steve ignores editor’s word limit and
(Steve Meretzsky)
Heaven falls. Details at eleven.
(Robert Jordan)

Choice Literacy got in on the act, polling authors who contribute to their site. My favorites:

Little bit Lucy, tempered by Ethel.
(Tami Maus)
It’s on my to do list.
(Mary Lee Hahn)

Since it’s spreading across the blogosphere now, and since I got tagged, I am hereby tagging all of you. You may write a novel or a memoir or both, but you must keep each to six words. No exceptions. (No, not even for DGW who has never written a mere six words about anything in his entire life.) I’ll expect 500 entries (at least) by the end of the day.