May 22, 2010

  • six words

    I was at dinner last night with a couple of friends, and one of them brought up the concept of the six word novel, and how Hemingway came up a great one. We looked it up on our phones at the dinner table to find the exact phrasing ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn."), and some of the related search results mentioned the idea of a six word memoir, and that got us talking. If you had to capture the essence of your life, or at least the most important aspect of your life in six words, what would those six words be?

    Based on the examples we found online, the snide, sarcastic, or funny ones were often more communicative than the earnest ones:

    "Not quite what I was planning." - Summer Grimes

    "Well, I thought I was funny." - Stephen Colbert

    "Liars: hysterectomy didn't improve sex life." - Joan Rivers

    And as we tried it out, it turns out that it's much easier to write the ones that have a smirk built in. 

    My friend came up with: "Pushed his limits. Results decidedly mixed."

    Some of mine:

    "Pursued reasonable hedonism with minimum harm."

    "Persevered through ups, downs, and sideways."

    "Loved people, travel, books, and food."

    But it's really hard to write a smirk-free memoir in six words, I suppose because first you have to pick a real idea that you want to capture in six words, and second, the idea you're trying to capture is so much more abstract and intangible.

    "Kept on moving, no matter what."

    "Did what I felt like doing."

    It's an interesting exercise, and I keep hoping that if I think about it for a few minutes every so often, maybe I will find a way to sketch out my life in six words. Let me know if you have more luck with this than I've been having so far.