A delicate, clinking trove

Smith Magazine's anthology of six-word memoirs "Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure Writers" is a delicate, clinking trove of regret, happiness and reinvention. I ordered a copy a few weeks ago from Anthology, and spent about an hour on the sofa in the store reading through the collection. Ok, so I didn't sit on the toilet and read it - which is one of the descriptions that the Smith editors give for their book - "The most literary toilet reading you'll ever find."

The best review I can give for this book is that after reading it, I shared it with many people. We passed the book around in workshops, choosing the memoirs we like best to read, and then we tried our hand at fitting our lives into a six word phrase. I've found that writing them is as addicting as the 365 project character descriptions. You can't write just one, you begin to think in six-word phrases for everything - you want everything in your life to be so compact and neat. That's the appeal, for me anyway. Total control. The appeal to the reader is a keyhole peek into another's life.

Here's one of mine:

It's always in the other purse.

Now stop lolling around here, go read a few from the book, and then write some of your own.