Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a complete story in six words. His response: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” He reportedly claimed that it was his best work. I guess if you only get six words, they each better pack quite a punch.
Hemingway, a master of the minimalist style, might have been the first to succeed at single sentence story telling, but today he would have a lot of company. We now have the six word memoir, a way to capture a life’s story or at least a philosophy in a few words.
I’m not sure if this has gained in popularity because few feel they have the time for the unabridged version or if it’s just plain fun to think of ways to capture our thoughts in one short sentence.
The online magazine, Smith, first proposed the six word idea as a contest for its readers. They were inundated with submissions, several of which ended up in the book with, of course, a six word title, “Not Quite What I Was Planning.”
It was so successful that a second collection of short insights has been released, this time with the focus on love and heartbreak. It’s an idea that has caught on informally as well, from parties to business retreats; all that is needed is a topic.
I was raised by a man of few words but one who also knew how to make them count. His economy of language seemed to lend to its strength and the words were so powerful they were hard to forget.
One of my brothers, an “A” student in high school, still recalls a letter he received from our dad after finishing his first semester of college and his grades had mistakenly been mailed home.
“You have fallen from the lofty heights of superiority into the bottomless depths of mediocrity. Call home.” In its brevity, those 17 words conveyed the full intention of the message. Adding more would have only diluted its meaning.
There are, at the very least, over a quarter of a million words to choose from in the English language and yet finding the right one, or even six of them, isn’t easy.
Some people are better at it than others. My mother often only needed three. I knew before she said another word that if she addressed me by my first, middle and last name, I was in trouble.
Writers try to find the words that will connect them to the reader. Most of us are avid about this search, even though it is so hard to get it right. I keep trying because I was influenced by someone who had such a great love of language.
While other men may have kept a little black book in their pocket, the one my dad carried was different. Instead of names and telephone numbers, his book was filled with favorite quotations, inspiring thoughts, and words that had special meaning for him.
There is a certain symmetry in our family’s story since I’ve had the chance to be part of the Colorado Voices program.
When we were kids living in a small town in Kansas, our dad applied and was offered a job at the Denver Post as a reporter. It was a job that a writer-at-heart but a father of seven couldn’t afford to take.
He had to turn it down and I suspect it was a regret he lived with for the rest of his life. But he passed along to me the desire to keep searching for just the right words, whether it takes six or six hundred and fifty.
So in the spirit of Hemingway, my dad, and the six word memoir: Words count. Choose the right ones.
Debbie Reslock (dreslock@q.com) of Evergreen is a partner in Reslock and Sullivan, an architectural and planning company. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
