For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Legend has it that this was the six word novel Ernest Hemingway composed when challenged to do so. I was struck by the force of those six words. I could imagine a host of stories behind those six words. Maybe the baby died before ever wearing the shoes. Maybe it was as boring as an extra pair of shoes that were given away because they were one too many. Maybe the mom was a heroin addict who sold the shoes on a lie for her daily hit. And on and on

As someone known as loquacious, I’ve always been attracted to my opposite, brevity. I’ve always wanted to see how someone could say the same thing with far less words. Given what I say, that is not hard. I’ve been attracted to characters who spoke little such as Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in the spaghetti westerns that launched him into stratosphere. The strong, silent type. I’ve liked spare writers, spare musicians who let silence emphasize the note rather than fill up every instant with sound.

A year or two back, I encountered a collection of short stories. I brought the book home intrigued by the length of the stories. They were not more than a page or two. One of them remained stuck in my mind for how well it brought out the physical attraction between two people swirling together for a while in the current of life. I don’t even remember the title of the book. That was the first time I had seen someone write such short a story.

What I also like about these is their willingness to bend rules. When I was in high school in India, I took it upon myself to compose poems. I struggled to write something without really knowing how except to realize that there was more to poetry than rhyming words. I spoke to our English teacher who I regarded very highly because he seemed erudite and uncommon in his wisdom. But I was put off by the rules that he quoted were requisite to writing poetry. Now I see poems written by so many different famous poets which are not very different from verse. Instead of asking me to play with words and fail a little, I was told rules that seemed impossible to understand, let alone follow, especially when words came oh-so-reluctantly.

Haiku, the famous short form of Japanese poetry, is another favorite of mine. Invented by a Japanese poet, Basho, in the 17th century, haiku is now a revered art form. Some of the famous haiku poems include:

summer grasses:
what’s left
of warriors’ dreams

silence:
the cicada’s cry
soaks into stone

On a leafless branch,
a crow’s settling:
autumn nightfall

Browsing the pathetically searchable website for borrowing ebooks, Overdrive, I came across a book called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: And Other Six-Word Memoirs by Writers“. In the Introduction, the editors, Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, write:

“… in November 2006, while thousands of people were cranking out tens of thousands of words during annual National Novel Writing Month, SMITH decided to lower the bar. We gave Hemingway’s form a new, personal twist: What would a six-word memoir look like?”

They launched an online magazine devoted to six word wonders, SMITH magazine. The book was a collection of six word memoirs by various writers, some world renowned and others less so. I browsed the collection to see who else had written six compelling words that told a haunting tale. The most famous ones, including some writers, hadn’t done as well as some of the names I didn’t recognize. The stories verged from the hilarious to profound wisdom. Here are some examples that I liked:

Bad brakes
discovered
at high speed.                  —Paul Schultz

God chose.
Said no.
Now what?                       —Adam Blackman

Cursed with cancer.
Blessed with friends.           —Hannah Davies

Divorced twice,
lived happily ever after.       —Susan Guyaux

Chinese? American?
Chinese-American?
The confusion endures.       —Paul Chin

Catholic school backfired.
Sin is in!                          — Nikki Beland

I still make coffee for two.   —Zak Nelson

I was born
some assembly
required                           — Eric Jordan

I thought of experimenting a little myself. Here are a few I came up with in about 15 or so minutes:

Got baby, got wife.
Got life.

Awake at four, demons at door.

Naked, empty: in life and death.

The goodbye note: I love you.

Wikipedia states that six word novels are just one form of what is called flash fiction. There are many forms of these, from as little as six to 55 to a thousand. I think six is a perfect place for Maya to playing, if she wants.

Reference:

sixwordmemoir.com: Online site by SMITH magazine folks

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