Top Six “Your Summer Stories in Six Words”
For SixContest #145, we asked Sixers to indulge in their summer memories. As the past few months reached record-breaking temperatures, our sizzling hot short-form scribes looked back on summers filled with first loves, sun freckles, and ocean tides.
“At Its Core, Grief Is Love”—The Power of Six Words to Heal
Guest post by By Elizabeth Shara
The Six-Word Memoir process came into my life at the perfect time. I had spent months trying to express the grief and pain that was tearing my heart apart. Writing had always been my go-to for personal growth and clarity but at this point in my life, filling pages with words did nothing for me. The tear-soaked paper only reminded me how fragile my world had become.
September’s Memoirist of the Month: Karen Golden
"I love that Six Words is truly a community. I love that people come and go, and I especially love that people stay."
Name: Karen Golden
Place: Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Member since: May 2011
Browse through the reams of Six-Word Memoirs from notjustagirlintheworld—at well over 2,000, there are plenty to peruse—and you’ll discover a clever (“Cloud 8 is my personal best”), quick-witted (“More Walter Mitty than Wonder Woman”), and pleasingly neurotic woman (“The cant’s have me totally surrounded”). If we could use only one word to describe her memoirs: acerbic. Of course, we’d rather use six: “Look up acerbic, find Karen Golden.”
August’s Memoirist of the Month: Kathryn Campbell
"I always thought I’d write a novel, and when I was younger I’d draft chapters with the big end goal in mind. But when I discovered short story form, and then poetry, and then six words, I came to the realization that often, less is more."
Name: Kathryn Campbell Place: Minneapolis, Minnesota SMITH Member Since: April 2011 [caption id="attachment_4948" align="alignright" width="560" caption="Kathryn Campbell with her children, Cameron (14), Olivia (4) and Victoria (17) celebrating Cam’s middle school Moving On this spring. (Photo by Diane Anderson)"]![Kathryn Campbell with her children, Cameron (14), Olivia (4) and Victoria (17) celebrating Cam’s middle school Moving On this spring. [Photo by Diane Anderson]](http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/files/2013/07/campbell-family-20132.jpg)
Kathryn Campbell has shared so many milestones with SMITH (from “Yes! Yes! 5 years cancer free.” to “She turns 0-4; I turn 4-0.”), it’s hard to believe it’s been a mere two years since she joined us. As SMITH member Lillybrook, Kathryn’s memoirs are insightful and touching (“Failed moments are awarded with wisdom.”), clever and introspective (“So perfectionist even my blood's A+.”) and show she’s wise beyond her years (“Important life lesson: do no harm.”). We were fortunate to catch the super-busy Kathryn during her summer break and are thrilled to feature her as SMITH’s Memoirist of the Month for August. Thanks to our friends at Spreadshirt. Kathryn can mark this milestone with a Six-Word Memoir T-shirt of her choice.
When did you start writing, and what have been turning points in your creative life? I started my first diary when I was six years old. I still have that Hallmark book with its keyed lock and green gingham cover. Most of my notes were pretty bland, but I wrote every day. Writing in a diary taught me that recording time illuminates those moments in life, both extraordinary and mundane, that you don’t see if you don’t document them.
July’s Memoirist of the Month: Dick Peterson
"Reading and writing Sixes provides a creative spark, as does commenting and conversing with the other Sixers. What a weapon against writer’s block it is. Seeing what other people do with words makes you a better writer."
Name: Dick Peterson
Place: Kansas City
SMITH Member since: July 2010
Since Dick Peterson joined SMITH in 2010, much of his writing has been about...writing. From “Let it be written...and read” to “Don't sit on it. Write it,” Dick has motivated himself and countless others to transform their thoughts into written words. Even his clever moniker pays homage to his beloved homeland and his yearning to write about it—Baton Rouge translates to Red Stick, he’s better known to the SMITH Community as RedStickWriter.
Dick lives in Kansas City, but explains he's "a Missourian by employment, a Louisianan by birth, a Southerner by the grace of God, and a Tybee Islander at heart." Currently writing his second novel, he says that his work in progress "is set in these places of intimate familiarity to me."
While Dick has been selective with his submissions, we’ve noticed a steady rise in memoirs in recent months. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that come the end of July, Dick retires from banking after a career spanning more than four decades. With his own recent six words—“Banking career sunsetting, writing ideas dawning”—as inspiration, we're so pleased to name Dick Peterson July's Memoirist of the Month. Congratulations on the Spreadshirt T-shirt of your choice and, more importantly, on having more time to “write a Six, then a chapter.”
Classroom of the Week: Essex Street Academy
This week’s featured classroom attends Essex Street Academy in NYC, a school that prides itself on its project-based focus on learning and personalized approach to education. The ninth and tenth graders taking a creative writing course with teachers Jenny Platow and Caitlin Thomas were asked to write Six-Word Memoirs after thoroughly analyzing the book, I Can't Keep My Own Secrets: Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous & Obscure, found in the school library.
The students were encouraged to notice not just the words used in the memoirs but also the positioning of the words on the page and the book's overall design. The class then went on to explore the Six-Word Memoir project as a greater movement by checking out some YouTube video compilations, celebrity six-worders and memoirs from teenagers just like them.
Several of the students have IEP's (Individual Education Plan) and struggle with reading and writing in some capacity; still, as we’ve so often found, the Six-Word Memoir format is for everyone. Although the main focus of their creative writing course this semester was dramatic writing, students took the creative liberty to mix things up by incorporating other forms of creative writing into the curriculum as well. Each student was required to create three to four memoirs of her own, whether funny, sad, serious or random.
“We quickly saw that while some of our students used the format as a way to just express their creativity and silliness others quickly gravitated towards revealing more serious and sad anecdotes from their life experiences,” Platow says.
Classroom of the Month: San Francisco Day School
"For the shy poets, taking a risk in six words to share a secret, a memory, or a fear is easier than delving into a longer poem."



