How to sum up a whole life in six words
No one knows whether the story’s true, but it is a good one anyway. Ernest
Hemingway was sitting having a drink with some writer friends at
Lüchow’s restaurant in New York. They were talking about this and that,
and eventually moved on to what the ideal length of a good novel might
be. Hemingway claimed that he could write a novel in six words: the
others each bet ten dollars that he couldn’t. Whereupon Hemingway wrote:
‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’ on a napkin. Six words, behind which
lies a tragedy. Those who don’t gulp when they read this must have hearts
of stone.
In 2006, Larry Smith, founder and editor of SMITH magazine, asked:
‘Can you tell your life story in six words?’
A dumped 27-year-old guy wrote: ‘I still make coffee for two.’ ‘Cursed
with cancer. Blessed with friends’ came from a nine-year-old cancer
survivor. The singer Moby confessed: ‘Dad died, mom crazy, me, too.’
And George Saunders summed life up beautifully: ‘Started small, grew,
peaked, shrunk, vanished.’
Smith’s formal restriction proved not to be limiting but stimulating, and
in the spirit of the pithy language used in social media, the logic of the
140-character tweet and the compulsive succinctness of texts, six-word
memoirs became a hit.
The thinking behind the abbreviated form: language is beautiful, and its
diversity and complexity are a reflection of the depth of human sensibility.
But it is also an excellent tool with which to beat around the bush. The
Six-Word Rule is not a rejection of sprawling, convoluted sentences or
endless digressions; even Hemingway was of the opinion that not every
idea can be pared down. But before writing (or speaking), you should ask
yourself these questions: What do I really want to say and can I say it
more succinctly?
If it’s important, keep it short.