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" Friendship is a sheltering tree "

Coleridge

Wasted my whole life getting comfortable

February 7th, 2008

An online magazine in the USA and now the BBC are encouraging readers to write 6 word stories or autobiographies.

The title of this post is an example of one of these, written by Richard Merrington for the BBC site.

This is such a perfect challenge for those interested in story-telling and the Bardic arts!

Here’s the backstory as the BBC explains it:

In the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway bet ten dollars that he could write a complete story in just six words. He wrote: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  He won the bet.  

You can see readers’ efforts at ‘Smith’, the magazine site, and others on the BBC site.

6 Responses to “Wasted my whole life getting comfortable”

  2. Try looking at the examples on the other two websites. They are such fun (and I think worthwhile) because they condense, distill, a whole set of meanings and feelings into a short phrase.
    ‘Wasted my whole life getting comfortable’ is great I think because at one level it’s just humorous, but at another it is aphoristic – pointing to the way we tend to exert so much effort in sheltering ourselves from the immediacy of life.

  3. I think your right. This is my six word story :

    I try to grasp the meaning.

    But somehow I think you knew that 🙂

  5. Still working on the distillation exercise!
    This is quite an interesting challenge, as the way we look at life really focuses on what words are appropriate. I read somewhere that it is important that we look at life as a game to be played and enjoyed; so my story todate seems to be:

    Learnt, played. Now earn to play

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