Rachel Fershleiser - Not quite what I was planning: six-word memoirs by writers famous and obscure : from Smith magazine

L EGEND HAS IT THAT E RNEST H EMINGWAY WAS ONCE challenged to write a story in six words. Papa came back swinging with, For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Some say he called it his best work. Others dismiss the anecdote as a literary folktale. Either way, the six-word story was born, and its been popping around the writing world for years. Launched online in 2006, SMITH Magazine celebrates personal storytelling and the ways in which technology has fueled storytellings growth and infinite possibilities.

We like to be both populist and aspirational, blurring the line between professional and amateur. So in November 2006, while thousands of people were cranking out tens of thousands of words during annual National Novel Writing Month, SMITH decided to lower the bar. We gave Hemingways form a new, personal twist: What would a six-word memoir look like? We asked our friends; they liked the idea. We ran it by memoirists we admire; they loved the challenge. We shared it with the tech communication wizards at Twitter.com; they wanted to team up to deliver a sixworder a day, free to anyone with a cell phone and a love of stories. With those pieces in place, we invited our readers to submit their short, short life stories for a contesta battle of brevity.

Soon, six-word wonders were zipping across the Netfrom laptops to SMITH, from Twitter to cell phones, from writers to their blogs, from readers to one another. And before we knew it, submissions were coming in by the thousands. Folks from all over the world sent in their sublime frustrations ( One tooth, one cavity, lifes cruel ) and inspired aspirations ( Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah! ), their divine wisdom ( Savior complex makes for many disappointments ), and deepest inner secrets ( I like big butts, cant lie ). And while most of the memoirs were penned by writers who have not been published (until now), others came from household namesfrom Aimee Mann (whose six is like a short, sweet song) to Mario Batali (who sent a generous half dozen to our table) to Joan Rivers (as outrageous and wonderful as youd imagine). We were most struck by the openness of the memoiristsand by their desire to share even more of their lives with perfect strangers. People sent us pictures of the adorable children theyd just admitted, in six words, they regretted having.

One woman wrote us a letter detailing the infertility developments that had rendered her hopeful memoir obsolete. Whole lifetimes happen in peoples lives every day, she wrote, so I suspect many memoirists write whats true at the time only to find their lives drastically different a short distance in the future. The enthused author of Hockey is not just for boys sent in a photo essay of chicks with sticks, plus the skate-blade sharpening machine of which shes grown so fond. An artist in San Francisco followed up his book illustration with a comic strip about Anna Nicole Smith. We received photos of deceased wives in bridal gowns, of the tiny headstones of babies lost. An accountant in Florida requested a snail-mail address; soon a packet of miniature origami animals arrived at our office.

Others were rising to the occasion in ways we hadnt expected. We heard that teachers were assigning six-word memoirs to their students; that families were trading six-word memoirs across their dinner tables; that pet fanatics were writing them for their dogs. We became as obsessed as our own memoirists. Wisdom started to appear everywhere in six-word increments. When a hand dryer in a public restroom bore the graffiti love me or leave me alone, we took it as a six-word sign from above. We had whole conversations while counting on our fingers (and one thumb) for six-word legitimacy.

We found ourselves debating the validity of hyphens over dinner and drinks. (Just how many words is three-legged cat?) The fruit of this amazing response? Youre holding it in your hands. One of the delights of reading six-word memoirs is imagining the writer behind those few carefully chosen words. Despite the well-documented dangers of assumption, we were surprised to learn how many of the real-life writers were nothing like we expected. The bittersweet Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends came not from a wise, optimistic grandmother, but a nine-year-old thyroid-cancer survivor.

The brave girls mother wrote to say that her daughter had sat alone at the computer for hours selecting her words, and then checked SMITH each day, hoping to see her name on the screen. The poignant I still make coffee for two didnt come from the shaky hand of an elderly widower, but a recently dumped twenty-seven-year-old dude with a fondness for caffeine. After months of reading six-word memoirs barely noticing the writers name, sometimes we were delighted by words seven and eight. After all, could you ask for a better life story from Deepak Chopras son than Sould out so I could prophet ? This book is a glorious mishmash of these and myriad other voices; its a thousand little windows into humanitysix words at a time. Whether the results are shocking, strange, silly, or sad, we hope youll agree that they are always entertaining, often inspiring, and totally addictive. In the autobiographical spirit of SMITH Magazine, the photos and illustrations that appear here arrived from the writers themselves.

To see hundreds of images we didnt have room for, plus new memoirs every day, go to www.sixwordmemoir.com . While youre there, you just might be struck by an overwhelming desire to supply a six-word memoir of your own. And why wouldnt you: Everyone has a storywhats yours? The editors of SMITH Magazine
September 2007
New York, NY