Your Life Story in Six Words

This just might get your creative juices flowing. Or at the very least, chop away at some of life’s mental riff-raff when you consider: What really matters? What are you truly about? How much story can be packed into 6 words? How much punch?

You’d think we’d all be experts, afloat as we are in a sea of restless soundbites and twitter-clips. But it’s not as easy as it might seem…

Below is an excerpt from Feb. 3 NPR , Can You Tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words?

Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

In this spirit, Smith Magazine invited writers “famous and obscure” to distill their own life stories into exactly six words. It All Changed in an Instant is the fourth collection of very, very brief life stories from Smith. The tiny memoirs are sometimes sad, often funny — and always concise.

It All Changed in an Instant is full of well-known names — from activist Gloria Steinem (“Life is one big editorial meeting”), to author Frank McCourt (“The miserable childhood leads to royalties”), to actress Molly Ringwald (“Acting is not all I am”).

Larry Smith, founding editor of Smith, and Rachel Fershleiser, Smith‘s memoir editor, talk to NPR’s Rebecca Roberts about the fun and the challenge of capturing real-life stories in six little words.

Smith’s six-word memoir? “Now I obsessively count the words.” And Fershleiser’s: “Bookstore to book tour in seconds.”

Can you write your autobiography in one sentence?

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Gets you thinking, huh. Can you do it? Are you willing to share yours? (I’m still thinking…)