{"id":1013,"date":"2008-03-15T18:09:15","date_gmt":"2008-03-15T23:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/womantalk.wordpress.com\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2008-03-15T18:09:15","modified_gmt":"2008-03-15T23:09:15","slug":"for-sale-baby-shoes-never-worn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/?p=1013","title":{"rendered":""For sale: baby shoes, never worn.""},"content":{"rendered":"

And hence the legend of very short stories begins with six words from Hemingway. SMITH<\/i><\/a>, an online magazine, had a reader contest that turned out to be so popular that the system almost crashed under the weight of 500+ submissions a day. Now the best ones have been compiled into a book titled Not Quite What I Was Planning.<\/i><\/p>\n

The contest? Your life story in six words.<\/p>\n

A few good ones culled from the brief article in the Feb 25 New Yorker:<\/p>\n

“Yes, you can edit this biography.” (Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia)<\/p>\n

“Eat mutate aura amateur auteur true.” (Jonathan Lethem)<\/p>\n

“Former child star seeks love, employment.” (Justin Taylor)<\/p>\n

“Well, I thought it was funny.” (Stephen Colbert)<\/p>\n

“Brought it to a boil, often.” (Mario Batali)<\/p>\n

“Not quite what I was planning…” (Summer Grimes, a 25-year old hairdresser in St Paul, whose submission was chosen for the book’s title.)<\/p>\n

Although the ones riffed by the article’s author were pretty funny too. I think the entire article was written in six-word sentences!<\/p>\n

“Born in California. Then nothing happened.”<\/p>\n

“Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence…”<\/p>\n

“Canoe guide, only got lost once.”<\/p>\n

Trying to write your own? Advice from the editor:<\/p>\n

“Try not to think too hard.”<\/p>\n

My own?<\/p>\n

“Never made it to med school.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And hence the legend of very short stories begins with six words from Hemingway. SMITH, an online magazine, had a reader contest that turned out to be so popular that the system almost crashed under the weight of 500+ submissions … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}