The Joy of Six

Literary legend has it that Earnest Hemingway was once challenged to write an entire story in six words.  He came back with "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."  According to the legend, he said it was his best work.

Based on that, the folks at SMITH Magazine invited readers to submit six-word memoirs.  The result is a fascinating book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.

Alan told me about it last week and suggested that it could make an interesting post.  I thought it would be a fun challenge since in general, I can't even order coffee in less than six words.  I thought I'd give it a whirl and then ask you to leave us your own six-word memoirs in the comments.

But then I thought, even better than that, I could make it a CONTEST.  With a PRIZE!  Pretty exciting, right?

So how it will work, I think, is this: you have until the end of the day on Friday (Feb. 15) to leave us your six word memoir in the comments.  Enter as many as you want.  They need to be original - no giving us six words straight from a quote or song, no matter how well they sum up your life.  And if you give me a fake email address, then you can't win.

The winner will be chosen by me (Superfantastic is no democracy - more of a benevolent dictatorship) and I'll post about it on Monday.  Unless I haven't decided who the winner is yet and then I'll post it later.  And then the winner will receive his or her fabulous prize in the mail at some point after that when I get around to going to the post office.

You can get some ideas at sixwordmemoirs.com.  To further assist you, I wrote a whole bunch of my own six-word memoirs and then deleted all but this one:

Took road less traveled.  Skinned knees.

If I come up with anything else I like, I'll post it in the comments.  But you can't think about that now.  You've got to start writing your own six-word memoirs to post!  So you can win a FABULOUS PRIZE!  Get to work!