Have you ever thought of how short a life narrative can be? Is it possible to have an ideal length for it? While we naturally assume that a proper life narrative should have at least 200 pages as we think of the stack of memoirs in bookstores, we will be surprised by how Larry Smith, the editor and publisher of SMITH Magazine, challenges our understanding of life narrative by introducing the Six-Word Memoirs.

Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s emotional, intriguing and complete six-word novel “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”, Larry Smith hosted the Six-Word Memoir project to challenge the “famous and obscure” to write their life stories in exactly six-words. This project has taken the world by storm that it has generated half a million memoirs.

One of the biggest features of six-word memoir is its minimalist style. It highly stresses on the precision of word choice. Writers have to make every word counts by choosing the most appropriate word or phrase to represent them. A war memoir: “Left as boy; home wounded human” is a case in point. Here, the writer concludes the damage he had after putting his life on the line for years in war. First, he uses “boy” and “human” to depict his long service in warfare that raised him up from a little innocent child into a mature adult. Besides, by using “human” instead of “man”, he devalues himself as a mere biological who has lost his ability to work and simply function like his uninjured male counterpart after the trauma. Second, the contrast of “left” and “home” tell us about his feeling of war. “Left” is a voluntary action, it means the writer is zealous for serving the country in the war at first. However, as time goes by, his longing for warmth, stability and care build up that he is so pleased to leave the war field and be home now. This story exemplifies that even though there are only six words, a complete and dynamic story can be told. The Six-Word Memoir encourages us to make the most of our words and remind us: Less is more.

In addition, this project gives an answer to one of the questions from my ASTU class: Who have the authority to write a memoir? As Smith would answer, everyone. He mentioned that “There is inspiration everywhere. Even if you don’t think you’re a storyteller, you are.”  For long, we have come to accept that most auto/biographies are written by famous people or those who have phenomenal experiences. Their fruitful lives provide endless sources for them to write up a whole book. For people who live an ordinary life like the most of us, however, may find it difficult to tell an inspiring life story, let alone to write a memoir. Yet, through this simple self-expressing platform offered by six-word memoir, memoirists can be heard even if they have not achieved anything tremendous and memorable in their lives. The lowered threshold of memoir length opens up an new arena that gives voice to ordinary writers. This makes life narratives an approachable genre rather than a prestigious form of writing.

While six-word memoirs favors lots of novice ordinary writers and introduces a new form of life narrative, it also raises some concerns. Frederick A. Wright in his study of six-word story argues that “A reader may sense that there is a story behind the six words and may even want to know what the story is, but that doesn’t make the six words themselves a story” (336). Indeed, these condensed memoirs leave out a lot of voids that have to be filled by readers’ imagination. More often than not this may result in misinterpretation and misjudging to the story. Sometime writers will have to provide readers with extra information so that they can have a full picture of who they are. For example, a memoir: “Desiring invisibility, she revealed his abuse” is supplemented by a 291-word behind six backstory. It is when readers read the extended story that they know the writer is working to help her student who lives in the shadow of sexual abuse.

Certainly, six-word memoirs appeal to both readers and writers in this fast paced world. Nonetheless, this new type of memoir cannot replace the traditional detailed and lengthy life narrative given its incompleteness in storytelling.

Works Cited

Wright, Frederick A, “The Short Story Just Got Shorter: Hemingway, Narrative, and the Six-Word Urban Legend.” Journal of popular culture 47.2 (2014): 327–340. Wiley     Online Library. Web. 21 Nov 2015

Smith, Larry. SMITH Magazine Six-Word Memoirs. SMITH Magazine, 2005. Web. 21 Nov. 2015