If You Could Write a Memoir in Six Words, What Would It Say? [VIDEO]

Posted by Larry Smith, SMITH Magazine at 12:01 PM on February 8, 2008.

When Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, it proved that a whole, real life can be told this way too.

From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in just a half-dozen well-chosen words. We're proud to present this trailer, a sampler showing that from bestselling authors like Dave Eggers and Stephen Colbert to the "slightly psychotic, in a good way" girl next door, everyone has a six-word story to tell.

You can submit your own six-word life story at www.sixwordmemoir.com and be considered for SMITH Mag's next book. And if anyone ever wonders whether you've got a short, short life story, you can make like mini-memoirist Joe Lockhart and reply: "Asked and answered, Asshole, next question."

Tagged as: books

Larry Smith is the founder and editor-in-chief of SMITH magazine