Some of us struggle to explain exactly why we write we just know it will take far more than six words to say. In this lesson, students examine the power of word choice as they write six-word memoirs of their lives. (You can see some of them here.) Some of us write to understand our lives, some of us write to escape them, and some of us write to share our experience. Just as everyone has a life story to tell, everyone has their own reasons for writing. Before you write your own pandemic six-word memoir and post it to our comments, keep in mind that the examples you read above were published in Sept. If you had only six words to share your life story with strangers, which six words would you choose? A six-word version of my story I often share with students is “Went to college, never came home,” but other six-word accounts of my life are equally accurate, like “Still writing after all these years.”Īt Friday’s event, we also asked students, faculty, and anyone passing by to pose with one of our #WhyIWrite whiteboards. It turns out you can say a lot in only a few words, and every semester my students and I try our hands at writing our own six-word memoirs. (You can read some examples here.) On the first day of my American Short Story class each semester, I tell students the apocryphal legend of Ernest Hemingway’s shortest story: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” We debate the larger story behind these words: who placed the ad, why were the shoes never worn, and is the baby who should have worn them alive, dead, or never born? List some of the most significant events in your life so far. Among the day’s activities was a six-word memoir wall where students, faculty, and staff posted colorful sticky-notes telling the (brief) stories of their lives.Ĭapturing your life in six words sounds difficult, but it’s fun and even addictive once you try it. Six Word Memoir Make a list of words and phrases that describe you. I am proud of being one of the revolutionaries who drove the change. A Revolution at School The events of that sunny spring day turned out to change the course of history at our school. The author sounds truly sincere when s/he calls himself (herself) a terrorist. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Harper Perennial.This past Friday was the National Day on Writing, and for the first time, Framingham State hosted an event sponsored by the English Department and the Center for Academic Success and Achievement (CASA). This example of a memoir contains some self-criticism. Some cross-eyed kid, forgotten then found.Įxtremely responsible, secretly longed for spontaneity.Įxcerpted from Not Quite What I Was Planning from Smith magazine, edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith. They might even write six-word memoirs from these characters at different points in the story, showing their perspective as it changes (or doesn’t) over time. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. In this book, students can write six-word memoirs from the perspectives of Rump, Red, Opal, King Barf, the aunts, the trolls, pixies, Frederick and Bruno, and the miller. Savior complex makes for many disappointments. She writes, It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. He called these brief life stories Six-Word Memoirs. Larry Smith, founding editor of Smith magazine, and Rachel Fershleiser, Smith's memoir editor, talk about the experience of capturing real-life stories in six words - no more, no less. In November 2006, Larry Smith, founder of what was then called SMITH Magazine, gave the six-word novel a personal twist by asking his community to describe their lives in exactly six words. The collection has plenty of six-word insights from everyday folks as well: Love me or leave me alone was scrawled on a hand dryer in a public bathroom I still make coffee for two was penned by a 27-year-old who had just been dumped.
6 word memoir examples full#
The book is full of well-known names - from writer Dave Eggers ( Fifteen years since last professional haircut), to singer Aimee Mann ( Couldn't cope so I wrote songs), to comedian Stephen Colbert ( Well, I thought it was funny). Their stories are sometimes sad, often funny - and always concise. Students are given a template to help them summarize their school year in 6 words. The result is Not Quite What I Was Planning, a collection of six-word memoirs by famous and not-so-famous writers, artists and musicians. In this spirit of simple yet profound brevity, the online magazine Smith asked readers to write the story of their own lives in a single sentence. Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."
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