Can You Tell Your Life Story In 6 Words?

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.“
Ernest Hemingway

If you think Twit­ter is abbre­vi­ated com­mu­ni­ca­tion, how about this one: can you tell your entire life story in exactly six words?

Wel­come to the Six Word Mem­oir Project, birthed from the brain and heart of Larry Smith, founder and edi­tor of SMITH mag­a­zine, an online repos­i­tory for people’s per­sonal stories.

Although the project is over three years old, I some­how man­aged to remain unaware of it until last week at the gym, where I saw a woman wear­ing a tee-shirt that said: www.sixwordmemoir.com on the back. Such an intrigu­ing con­cept! Assum­ing there was more to the story, I couldn’t wait to see what was on the front of her shirt.

Being that I was mov­ing in place on the ellip­ti­cal and she was mov­ing around the cir­cuit on the machines, I didn’t man­age to catch up with her until just as I was leav­ing the gym. The front of her shirt read: “The psy­chic said I’d be richer”.

OK, I was hooked and had to learn what this was. From our brief exchange, I learned that Larry Smith, a friend of hers and for­mer arti­cles edi­tor at Men’s Jour­nal, took an old idea inspired by Ernest Hem­ing­way, who was chal­lenged to write a story using only six words. Hemingway’s story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Whew! I don’t know about you, but that one kind of leaves me speech­less. Don’t those six words cap­ture the essence of an entire jour­ney through the joy of expec­ta­tion to the sor­row of loss? Or maybe it tells the story of some­one who changed their mind about start­ing a fam­ily and took their life in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. Or it could be the story of some­one who never expe­ri­enced their own child­hood or who never walked in another’s shoes.

The pos­si­bil­i­ties for inter­pre­ta­tion are end­less, thus invit­ing read­ers to sup­ply their own imag­i­na­tions in bring­ing mean­ing to each offering.

In 2006, Smith took Hemingway’s idea, launched an online mag­a­zine and chal­lenged peo­ple to sub­mit a six word mem­oir, offer­ing an iPod to the win­ner. He expected to receive maybe a few hun­dred entries. He was imme­di­ately del­uged with over 11,000 entries.

Today, over 250,000 six word mem­oirs have been sub­mit­ted, and the idea has become a cul­tural phe­nom­e­non, spawn­ing a best sell­ing book series, includ­ing Not Quite What I Was Plan­ning: Six-Word Mem­oirs by Writ­ers Famous & Obscure, Six-Word Mem­oirs on Love & Heart­break, Six-Word Mem­oirs by Teens Famous & Obscure. and It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Mem­oirs by Writ­ers Famous & Obscure.

Dis­till­ing your life’s story into only six words is chal­leng­ing. Want to try it? Let’s have our own lit­tle con­test and see what we pro­duce. Here are some exam­ples that are among my favorites:

“Don’t make me come down there.” — God (seen on a church bill­board)
“The mis­er­able child­hood leads to roy­al­ties” — Frank McCourt, author
“Life is bet­ter in soft paja­mas”- from a 3rd grader in New Jer­sey
“Now I obses­sively count the words” — Larry Smith, edi­tor of SMITH mag­a­zine
“Three mar­riages; three divorces; grate­fully sin­gle.” Judith Rich
” I finally came home to myself.” Judith Rich (OK, I cheated and did 2).

OK, it’s your turn. Let’s hear what you got. If you want more inspi­ra­tion, visit the 6WM Face­book page and see what read­ers like your­self come up with everyday.

And if you want to sub­mit your own mem­oir as a pos­si­ble entry in a future col­lec­tion, check out SMITH mag­a­zine and indoc­tri­nate your­self in this world of pos­si­bil­i­ties. There are six word cat­e­gories for moms, teens, rela­tion­ships, heart break, pol­i­tics, Oscars, Olympics, and many more and the list keeps on growing.

Maybe you could start a cat­e­gory of your own. The nom­i­na­tions are open for new cat­e­gories and if enough of you are inter­ested, we’ll explore them in future posts. What’s new and hap­pen­ing right now and how can we dis­till it into six words?

For exam­ple: Health­care: “I told you I was sick.”

The floor is all yours. Have fun with this and bless­ings on the path.

Fol­low Dr. Judith Rich on Twit­ter: www.twitter.com/dr_judithrich

Tagged as: A.O. Smith Corp, author, baby shoes, Blogs, Communication, editor, Ernest Hemingway, Frank McCourt, Human Interest, intriguing concept, iPod, Judith Rich, Larry Smith, life, love, Mass media, memoir project, Men's Journal, New Jersey, Olympics, online magazine, Online magazines, online repository, Oscars, Publishing, six words, Six-Word Memoirs, Smith Magazine, Three Inc., Twitter Inc