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The other day I stumbled upon a charming idea from Larry Smith, Editor of Smith, the US based online magazine, which takes a Hemingway anecdote as it’s inspiration. Back in the 20’s, Hemingway apparently bet ten dollars that he could write a complete story in just six words. He wrote:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Needless to say he won the bet. Smith set up a collaborative project which invited people to write their life story in just six words. And hundreds of people did. A collection of the best ones, including a few micro-memoirs from some well-known
writers, has just been published as a book (called "Not Quite What I Was
Planning"). Some are very clever, some are quite poignant, some are funny:
Head in books, feet in flowers
Heather Thomson
Love mountains, both ups and downs
Dennis Lee
Wasted my whole life getting comfortable
Richard Merrington
Luckily, never got my first wish
Theo Matoff
Not quite finished, tell you later
Dave Nicholson
Jennie, Emma, Jane, Sophie, Rose, happiness
Peter Graham
Any chance I could start again?
Sunny Tailor
So that got me thinking as to what mine might be, and it’s quite an intriguing thing think about. The temptation is to come up with six separate descriptive adjectives (but how do you pick just six?) or to turn it into a short-list of the things that matter most to you (which is equally difficult). In the end, I settled on:
"Always trying to make things better."
So what’s yours? I’d love to know. Leave a comment or post and link back.
Related link: Larry Smith interview on Radio 4
UPDATE:
Thanks to the LOVE blog for pointing out that there is also a six word story Flickr group
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