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Authors: Larry Smith,Rachel Fershleiser

B001NLKW62 EBOK

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Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak
 

by Writers Famous & Obscure

 
From Smith Magazine
Edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith
 

We launched SMITH Magazine (www.SMITHmag.net) in 2006 because we’ve always believed in the power of storytelling. Collecting six-word memoirs, as we’ve been doing for more than two years now, has taught us even more than we imagined. 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 we first asked readers to submit six-word memoirs back in December 2006, we realized a whole, real life can be conveyed this way, too. We’ve learned about honesty and bravery and good writing, often from people who hadn’t considered themselves “writers.” We’ve witnessed how generous people can be in sharing their stories, and how much it means to them to be asked.

People around the world told us of happiness and pain (“Found true love, married someone else”), success and failure (“Never really finished anything, except cake”), and how rarely the path we start on is the one we take to the completion of a journey (“After Harvard, had baby with crackhead”). Perhaps contributor Summer Grimes really did say it best—for most of us, life is “not quite what I was planning.” We used her memoir as the title of our first book, and it was a hit, even making the
New York Times
bestseller list—for
six
weeks, as luck would have it.

The most exciting thing about the success of
Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure
has been watching other people re-imagine the form. From kindergarten through graduate school, teachers brought the six-word storytelling exercise into their classrooms. A reverend in North Carolina preached six-word prayers to his congregation, and a young girl in California ended her eulogy for her poker-loving grandma with a six-word summation of her life (“Look, I have a royal flush!”). An exercise instructor used these mini-memoirs to keep his cycling students pumping, and an Alzheimer’s sufferer turned to our stories when longer ones proved too challenging to remember. A composer decided to begin a six-word song cycle, and after a blogger challenged her readers to write a six-word memoir and then “tag” five friends, a six-word memoir “meme” began racing across hundreds of thousands of personal blogs all over the world. It continues to grow as we write these words.

Six-word memoirs still pour into SMITH every day. As we’ve sifted through piles of briefly encapsulated lives, we’ve seen themes emerge, from faith to hair to masturbation to French fries. By far the most common thread, however, is love. Passionate love, parental love, platonic love—it seemed to be the most universally life-changing factor for storytellers of every age, background, and worldview.

This book celebrates life in all its shades of red—a valentine, if you will, to every kind of love. But it’s also a nod to love’s evil twin: heartache. So many of our favorite memoirs, from “Ex-wife and contractor now have house” to “Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said,” reflect the other side of Cupid’s coin—the breakups and losses that make the hard-won magical moments that much more powerful.

We’ve once again brought you a book that’s a grab bag of the famous and unknown. Both types of memoirist are inspiring, and often it won’t matter which you’re reading. You don’t have to be a fashionista to feel each and every one of designer Marc Ecko’s six words: “It never hurt as good again.” If you’ve read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book
Eat, Pray, Love
, then her six words, “My life’s accomplishments? Sanity, and you,” carry extra-special meaning. If you haven’t, you still appreciate the sentiment.

The oft-quoted Tolstoy line “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” seems to hold true for relationships as well. It was frequently the six-word stories of complications or even misery that we found most fascinating and deeply felt. Entire books lie beneath “Teen homewrecker. Still miss his kid,” “She got Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I bailed,” and “War destroyed his heart and mine.”

Of course the happily-ever-afters have their own charm, and some of the most touching stories come from those who’ve found the secret of everlasting love. Late Yankees great Bobby Murcer and his wife, Kay, offer a pair of memoirs on Chapter 1. They met when he was eleven, she nine. “When Kay flashed those big brown eyes my way, I was a goner!” he told us just months before he passed away. “Been gazing into them for over fifty years!” Kay said, “We have opposing personality traits, but our daily dose of laughter is the key to marital bliss.”

We also mined love stories from some more mismatched contributors. We’ve got memoirists gay, straight, single, married, divorced, and polyamorous, hailing from Australia to Vietnam. An entry by sex columnist Dan Savage sits alongside one by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Robert Hass. Janice Dickinson dishes out six words of advice in the brazen spirit she’s known for, while Chip Rowe—a.k.a. The Playboy Advisor—reveals something we suspect he’s never told his millions of readers. And what has the world’s most famous divorce lawyer, Raoul Felder, learned about love? Heartbreaking, indeed.

We hope this book will provide some laughs, some glimmers of recognition, and some moments of solace. Under the covers with your sweetheart, over cocktails with friends, or alone with a tube of cookie dough, you’ll find real life on every page. Ponder the stories, write your own, and tell them at sixwordmemoirs.com.

Lastly, we offer this six-word suggestion: Share them with someone you love.

The Editors of SMITH Magazine
January 2009
New York, NY

 
 

Offered my heart; he embraced it.

—Sue Kimber

 
 

Should have read the

pre-nup agreement.


Loranne Brown

 
 

Not always perfect.

But so worthwhile.


Lauren Anderson

 
 

Lost my virginity to her husband.


Shawna Mayer

 
 

Red-eye. Him window.

Me aisle. Love.


Joanne Flynn Black

 
 

Thought “great legs!”

Said “great smile!”


Lionel Ancelet

 
 

Coffee, my vice. So was he.


Alessandra Rizzotti

 
 

If I get Chlamydia,

blame MySpace.


Hanorah Slocum

 
 

What once

were two, are one.


George Saunders

 
 

I never said “I love you.”


S. Lynn Taylor

 
 

Don’t trust a man who waxes.


Noelle Hancock

 
 

Waited for her

to be legal.


Jonathan Lesser

 
 

Lovesick. 1985.

Suicide by Pop Rocks.


Jaynel Attolini

 
 

She got back on the Vespa.


Josh McHugh

 
 

Magnetic attraction

fused two polar opposites.


Phil Sylvester

 
 

He’s dumb but lifts

heavy stuff.


Laura Fausset

 
 

Will government ever let us marry?


Vicki Marsh

 
 

I think it was the cassoulet.


Amy Ephron

 
 

Never forget, I love you madly.


Alan Rader

 
 

Love blooms like crocuses:

dirty, brave.


Antay Bilgutay

 
 

Feasted, fasted, festered, fostered.

Fisted? Ewww.


Ben Karlin

 
 

I wasn’t supposed

to meet you.


Deborah Greene

 
 
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