This is a familiar story.
Hemingway famously bet someone that he could write a novel in six words. What he came up was:
“For sale, baby shoes, never used.”
And there you have it. The Glasgow Middle School sixth graders in Kentucky were challenged to find their inner Hemingway and write a memoir in six words. They certainly were able to come up with slogans for their lives in six words. Examples:
- X-box made me hate the park.
- Fighting over nothing is definitely something.
- Keep running. Don’t stop. Not yet.
- Rock music blaring made today exceptional.
- Ignorance is bliss—that’s a lie.
My women’s group tried this and some of the outcomes were really interesting and illuminating. Given the fact that the exercise was announced and then we were given pens and paper to scrawl something in the next five minutes made the challenge harder.
Someone wrote, “Good girl, bad girl, okay woman.”
Anther wrote, “See you, see them, see me.”
Another answer, “Husband, work, kids, what about me?”
Try it yourself and see what emerges. It is a truly interesting dinner party game over coffee and dessert.