Six-Word Memoir Contest

Have you tried to tell your life story in just six words?  Smith magazine discovered a gold mine with this concept a few years ago and now has published several popular books listing these short narratives.

The whole concept derives from a single story. Supposedly Ernest Hemingway was challenged to tell a story in six words and chose these:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

The fact that six words can punch you in the gut or make you laugh out loud has led to many book and magazine sales and many conversations around the dinner table and at work. Here is a video that offers more illustrations.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACJboxe-8QY&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Now for the fun part. A contest. Please offer your own six-word memoir below. I will send to the winner a copy of a lovely hardcover book, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food,  a book I reviewed here on a previous blog post.

Here are the rules: tell a truth about your life in six words. No more. No less. I will pick the one I find funniest or most profound. If more than one bowls me over, I reserve the right to dish out more prizes of recently published books. If the winner doesn’t want to read the memoir of Julia Child’s editor (pictured on the left), I’ll offer some other tasty book morsel.

You can enter as often as you wish between now and Sunday January 17 at 5 p.m. Go!

Six-Word Memoir Valentine’s Day Special

If you have not yet discovered the joy of the six-word memoir, here’s a past post that will fill you in–a lecture at Google by the authors of this book:

And if you missed this week’s long NPR segment on six-word memoirs on love and heartbreak, here’s the link that will take you there.

Below is a sampling straight from the NPR website of love-related six-word memoirs.

Red-eye. Him window. Me aisle. Love.
- Joanne Flynn Black

What do you want for dinner?
- Drew Magary

If only he wasn’t a Republican.
- Holly Fitzpatrick

Best family ever. Thank you, Match.com!
- Alexa Young

Marriage, children, empty nest: Now what?
- Oliver House

Excerpted from Six-Word Memoirs On Love And Heartbreak from Smith magazine, edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith. Copyright 2009. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Harper Perennial.

Want to try your hand at a six-word love story memoir.  Leave one in the comment space!

Six-Word Memoir Google Video

Since my previous post about six-word memoirs elicited some response, here is a great video with examples at the beginning and a speech from Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, who tell the story of how Smith Magazine created this special form.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0uPiMeVA4&hl=en&fs=1]