Listen to Six-Word Memoirs on NPR
Want to hear people from all over the country call in their life stories in six words? It’s a pretty good way to spend 17 minutes! Just click here.
Posted in Memoir in the News, radio
Want to hear people from all over the country call in their life stories in six words? It’s a pretty good way to spend 17 minutes! Just click here.
Hey Shirley — So glad you visited my blog, because it led me to yours! I love what you're doing here. Such a big part of being able to write memoir is reading work by others.
Glad this was a useful post, Clif. I love keeping my antennae up for memoir news. This new awareness is a little like I was pregnant and for the first time began noticing how many pregnant women and babies there are in the world! Memoir is all around us–and sometimes the more boiled-down it is, the more profound.
Upon seeing my name in Shirley's response to Alexis (above) I feel compelled to note that I'm pretty sure that Shirley intended for the name Alexis to appear there.Now on to another subject. The following is a comment about a variation on the 6 word memoir idea. Simon & Schuster in one of their promotional emails provided me with the following link to their “My Life in 8 Words” Twitter page.http://twitter.com/mylifein8words?custd=332546Viewers are invited to see if they can recognize their favorite authors from their descriptions of themselves using 8 words or less. Of course it's limited to submittals from authors published by Simon & Schuster.The following are my observations:1. Authors are known for their verbosity so can't be limited to 6 words (as are the rest of us).2. Many of the authors didn't follow the rules and used more than 8 words. (Verbosity strikes again.)3. The only author's name I recognized from my brief search was Philippa Gregory who submitted the following: “Diverse, entertaining, joyful, complex, busy, fulfilled, interesting, loving, integrated”4. A string of adjectives as provided by Gregory does not paint as clear of a picture as the following submitted by Dominic Smith that includes a few nouns (and is limited to 8 words). “A muddle of solitary rooms and crowded cafes.”5. I found myself contemplating the double meaning of this one submitted by Joshua Clark (which exceeds 8 words). “I've never lived inside a word, much less 8 of them.”6. Simon & Schuster is on to some subtle but effective advertising with this page. I now know of several authors with whom I was previously unfamiliar.