Synopses & Reviews
Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive,
Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity six words at a time.
One Life. Six Words. What's Yours?
When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.
From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.
Review
"[T]hese ADD autobiographies prove that brevity can be the soul not simply of wit." Very Short List
Synopsis
Why have so many writing teachers adopted Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure? Because it a treasure trove of topics for classroom discussion and writing assignments. Not only is the six-word memoir a terrific writing exercise, the examples in the book can be used to prompt longer writing assignments.
When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.
From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.
--Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The debut fiction project of an acclaimed artist and illustrator, 420 CHARACTERS is a collection of sharp and evocative miniature storiesand#160;first presentedand#160;as Facebook status updates.
Synopsis
Within this collection of miniature stories, entire worlds take shapeand#8212;some like our own, some hallucinatory fairylands--populated by heartsick cowboys, random criminals, lovers and drifters. In a dazzling narrative constellation, Beachand#8217;s characters contend with the strange and terrible and beautiful in life, and no outcome is certain. Begun as a series of Facebook status updates,
420 Characters marks a new turn in an acclaimed artist and illustratorand#8217;s career, and features original collages by the author.
Video
About the Author
Larry Smith founded
SMITH Magazine on January 6, 2006, which was already National Smith Day. Most recently, he was the articles editor of
Men's Journal, and has been the executive editor of Yahoo! Internet Life, senior editor at
ESPN magazine, and a founding editor of
P.O.V. and
Might magazines. His writing has appeared in
The New York Times, Wired, Popular Science, Men's Health, Salon, and
Slate.
Rachel Fershleiser has written for The Village Voice, New York Press, Print, and other publications. She's SMITH's memoir editor and lives in New York City.
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser