“The constraint fuels rather than limits our creativity.”

By Maria Popova

• 12 thoughts on “ Six-Word Memoirs: Quarantine Edition ” Pia Alliende March 28, 2020 at 9:59 am. The world is with you. The coronavirus not only kills people but is in our brain almost all the time.I hope tomorrow is one of the good connecting days.
• In settings such as in boardrooms, classrooms, staff retreats, and conferences, Six-Word Memoirs® is a simple concept that’s become an effective tool to spark conversation, crystalize goals, and boil anything down to its core.

In 2006, Larry Smith presented a challenge to his community at SMITH Magazine: How would you tell your life’s story if you could only use six words? The question, inspired by the legend that Hemingway was once challenged to write an entire novel in just six words, spurred a flurry of responses — funny, heartbreaking, moving, somewhere between PostSecret and Félix Fénéon’s three-word reports. The small experiment soon became a global phenomenon, producing a series of books and inspiring millions of people to contemplate the deepest complexities of existence through the simplicity of short-form minimalism. The latest addition to the series, Things Don’t Have To Be Complicated: Illustrated Six-Word Memoirs by Students Making Sense of the World, comes from TEDBooks and collects dozens of visual six-word autobiographies from students between the ages of 8 and 35.

In the introduction, Smith speaks to the liberating quality of constraints:

33 Six-Word Stories That Will Take You On An Emotional Rollercoaster 'It's still you. Always will be.' By Anjali Patel. We asked members of the. Piper Kerman, 'Six Words Live,' Oct 19, 2013 Walter Mosley, 'Six-Word Story Show,' September 21, 2011 Colin Nissan, 'Six Words live from SMITH Magazine,' Oct 4, 2012.

As an autobiographical challenge, the six-word limitation forces us to pinpoint who we are and what matters most — at least in the moment. The constraint fuels rather than limits our creativity.

6 Word Memoir Examples With Paragraph Writing

The micro-memoirs are divided into four sections — grade school, high school, college, and graduate school — and touch, with equal parts wit and disarming candor, on everything from teenagers’ internal clocks to the escapism of Alice in Wonderland.

6 Word Memoir Generator

6 Word Memoir Examples About The Past

Things Don’t Have To Be Complicated comes on the heels of TED’s The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope and offers an inadvertent yin to its yang.