Six Words; Just Can't Leave Them

If you would like to hear an interview with author Larry Smith (Not Quite What I Was Planning), go to Talk of the Nation on the National Public Radio web site right here. 

A few more memoirs from the book:

Revenge is living well, without you (Joyce Carol Oates)

After Harvard, had baby with crackhead (Robin Templeton)

70 years, few tears, hairy ears (Bill Querengesser)

And wait, there's more. Here's another NPR link to a discussion of six word memoirs, and yet a few more reader-submitted memoirs found on that page:

Job stinks. Art doesn't pay. Dang. (Peter Nelson)

Broken. Picked up. Dropped. Life sucks. ("Leah")

A double contribution from our own Auntie Bucksnort (written after a day of spring cleaning projects):

right tool, right job... sound back. 

wrong tool, wrong job... ice pack 

Okay. 

Must stop blogging. Apron. Supper. Husband.

More Six Word Phrases Seen Everywhere

A while back, Newsweek had an article called That's So Romantic. And So Brief on the six-word memoirs book.  Here are a few of the featured phrases in Newsweek:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn. (Ernest Hemingway).

Our prison visitations were surprisingly romantic. 

People can't want what they want. 

Didn't realize I'd still be lonely.

My marital advice? Marry an orphan.

It's better when you're the celebrity.

They invited Newsweek readers to submit their own memoirs. Here are a few:

Born sane. Went crazy. Found peace. 

Didn't think I'd survive. I did. 

Growing old? Only for the tough.

Suddenly, I'm counting each little phrase I read or write, and everything expressed in six words takes on a new meaning.

Sigh, such an old-fashioned person (just wrote that in an email)

Try a little tea and sympathy (article in Newsweek on Pakistan)

6 Word Memoirs

I've been hearing about these little phrases made of six words that sum up a person's life--"not quite what I was planning"--is both an example and the title of a book by Larry Smith: Not Quite What I Was Planning; Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. I didn't realize that the phenomenon started with Smith Magazine (Everyone Has a Story. What's Yours?).

Here are a few examples from the magazine's web site. 

On Love and Heartbreak:

The laws are different in Nevada

Told you that wasn't a girl

She read between the pickup lines

Food:

Adequate intake from Scotch food group

Lost Mother's recipe for tuna casserole

He wants me to make bacontinis

Recent contest winners:

Enter left. Move center. Exit right.

Climbed Mount Everest. Also compulsive liar.