My brother recently sent me a book created by the editors of the online magazine SMITH, a home for all sorts of lively story-related projects. Called Not Quite What I Was Planning
, the book is a collection of six-word memoirs. Yes, that's right, six words, as in the book title itself. This might be a bit too succinct for most of us writing life story, but it's interesting to see what folks come up with in this very limited form.Some of the results are suprisingly poignant: "Learned to live with great loss"..."WASP wants to be soul man"..."I fell far from the tree"...Painful nerd kid, happy nerd adult"..."Wasted time regretted so life reinvented"..."Almost a victim of my family"..."Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished" and "Act Two curtain brought dramatic improvements." In some ways these little "bites" tell us little; in other senses they suggest so much. For example, the editors point out that the moving mini-memoir "Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends" was written not by a mature survivor but a nine year old. I'm sure many of the others have similar surprises behind them.
There is social commentary here and there, as in Dean Haspiel's "Tombstone won't say 'had health insurance'" and Johan Baumeister's "Joined Army. Came out. Got booted." There's disagreement: one six-word memoir says "I'm my mother and I'm fine," while another begs "Became my mother. Please shoot me." There's some poetry: "The light that night was perfect." And, of course, there's lots of playfulness and humor.
In that latter vein I particularly liked "Speaks mind especially when losing it," "Awkward girl takes chances. Fun ensues," "Occasionally wrong but never in doubt," "Never really finished anything, except cake," "Sold belongings. Became Itinerant Poetry Librarian," "A crush on Susan Sarandon. Unrequited" and "The psychic said I'd be richer" (Elizabeth Bernstein). Because a college professor once said that I had an "unfortunate passion for semicolons," I of course felt like a soul sister of Iris Page, who wrote "Semicolons; I use them to excess," yet as a teacher now myself I laughed at the rueful "All of my students hate me."
Though many of the writers are people not in the public eye, some are well known. It's interesting to see how they explain lives that are well documented elsewhere. "Me see world! Me write stories!" is Elizabeth Gilbert's apt offering, while another writer, Po Bronson, wrote slyly, "Stole wife. Lost friends. Now happy." Journalist and disabilities activist John Hockenberry wrote "IBM brat broke back; twins, Mac," a surprisingly detailed literal account of a complex life," while comic Stephen Colbert noted only, "Well, I thought it was funny."
Could you write your life story in six words? What would they be?
SMITH has lots of similar story starters. If you need some fun prompts, visit the site and check them out.
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