six-word memoirs

Last night at a writing workshop I help run, our students started the session out responding to a prompt that called for them to write a complete story in as few words as possible. Ernest Hemingway's evocative six-word novel ("For sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.") was the inspiration. Though the prompt was not intended to illicit only stories six words in length, it mostly did. And as another tutor commented, they were mostly six-word memoirs. The concept intrigues me.

No doubt you are cheering at the thought that I too might take up the six-word memoir. I've certainly written with brevity in mind in the past, but the product has mostly been poetry. To write a complete personal story in six words seems, to me, a bold challenge to my editing abilities. I plan to spend the next few days attempting to take it on. I promise to share the results if I have any success.

Note that I've given this a brief try already and find it really hard. (No laughing at that, please.) Here are my first stabs at it, with a little leeway on word count (but still keeping it in the single digits!):

Words on the page: like heartbeats.


A book of poems: like wings.


A book of poems: my scripture.


Alone but not lonely: source of my joy.


Raul: Now, a foreign name. Soon, my first nephew.


We'll see if I can come up with anything more interesting/creative/poignant than those first attempts. I also invite some of you to try your hand at it; it's a fun, if frustrating, challenge. And to get us all in the right mindset, I'll close out with a poem I've long loved for its achievement of saying a tremendous amount in just a few words. From Rainer Maria Rilke:

But if you'd try this: to be hand in my hand
as in the wineglass the wine is wine.
If you'd try this.