For Member of the Month Lynn LeBlanc, known as Loon,
Six-Word Memoirs are a family affair. Once LeBlanc got the Six-Word bug, he explains, “I began to compose thousands of Six-Word Memoirs and
pestering my close friends and relatives to read and evaluate them.” In the process of writing over 5,000 Six-Word Memoirs, he inspired his mother, aka NicknameBill, his daughter Julie Wakefield, aka FinchGirl, and even his eight-year-old granddaughter Madilynn Capri LeBlanc-Wakefield, aka Beauty12, to
join SMITH and contribute their own memoirs.

“All of them have been featured at one time or another,” says LeBlanc. This prolific sixer recently took a few minutes out of his day to answer six questions from SMITH Magazine. Read more »

Welcome to SMITH. We’ve just turned six.

If you’ve found this post at SMITH or clicked on the link from your “verification email,” you’re probably new to our storytelling community. Whether 6 or 600 words, that is our passion, our drive: storytelling. Our tagline is “Everyone has a story. What’s yours?” Here’s part of ours.

Teachers! Please check out our special section called Six in Schools.

The most popular neighborhood in the SMITH community is Six-Word Memoirs. More than half a million Six-Word Memoirs have been written and shared by our members and on our site for teen scribes, SMITH Teens. We’ve created and published seven books of Six-Word Memoirs (including a Japanese translation) and are always working on more. (For a history of the project, watch this video from the PopTech conference). Who knows? Your memoir might be part of our next book! The heart and soul of Six-Word Memoirs happens right here on the website where smart, fun, engaged and thoughtful community members share parts of their lives in six words every day.

You can write as much or as little as you like. Some members post multiple memoirs daily, others share sporadically and a few “write and run.” If you poke around the site and start coming back regularly, you’ll be welcomed by other members and will experience what a true community SMITH Magazine is. So what makes a great community? Great community members. Here are six secrets to having a great experience on SMITH. Read more »

SMITH enthusiasts were sharing Six-Word Memoirs at Saucy Burt’s meatball sandwich cart in downtown Minneapolis on a chilly fall day when December’s Member of the Month Amanda Bausch, her husband Sherman, and her three-year-old son Elijah (pictured above) rolled up on their bikes to join in on the impromptu six-word slam and meatball chow-down.

With a half-eaten sandwich in one hand, Sherman Bausch counted six words on his fingers: “My beard likes the meatball sandwiches!” Elijah piped up with a ponderous six-word question: “Why is fire so hot, Dad?” And Amanda Bausch opined on life with her quirky family: “Better than I could have planned.”

“I’m pretty sure I was counting my words for the rest of the day,” says Bausch, who joined SMITH Magazine’s online community that evening.

Recently, between cycling, yoga, raising her son Elijah, and visits to Saucy Burt’s, Amanda Bausch took a few minutes to answer six questions from her home in Minneapolis. Read more »

“Nope, the name’s not short for Jason, and it’s not Jase with an s. It’s ace with a J,” explains October Member of the Month Jace Daniel Albao, whose father had a thing for cards. “He wanted to give his first born a name that rhymed with ace. I’ve done my best to substantiate his decision.”

This month SMITH readers learned how Albao’s father’s gambling habit determines more than just Albao’s name in his Moment “Pocket Cowboys,” which tells the story of his father’s card game on the night of Albao’s birth. “My old man had promised her he wouldn’t gamble again, but special occasions call for exceptions,” writes Albao. “After all, he was a new father, and it was a night to celebrate.” Read more »

Dan Campbell (Banjodan), Member of the Month for September, has emerged as one of SMITH’s funniest and most prolific Six-Word Memoirists —accruing a fan base among the other sixers along the way. Campbell has written more than one thousand Six-Word Memoirs, many about his marriage to his wife Zoila who shares Campbell’s zany view of life. Last month, “My sex tape’s on Comedy Central” was featured as the Six-Word Memoir of the Day, and still sits near the top of SMITH’s “most commented” charts. Campbell and his wife don’t actually have his sex tapes on Comedy Central, he explains. “The sex tape memoir was just to make fun of people who have become ‘celebrities’ because their sex tape ended up on the internet.”

“My favorite memoirs on SMITH are the ones about relationships,” says Campbell. “My wife has a great sense of humor.” That’s a good thing coming from a guy whose sixes include, “Discovered my inflatable girlfriend’s a guy,” “Immature wife drowned my rubber duckies,” “Wife’s back! She kissed dog first,” and “Marriage: My mancave has pink curtains.” At the same time, memoirs like, “The days fall like loose change,” “Sadly, some storms last a lifetime,” among many others, reveal the softer side of this banjo-loving man, many of which will end up in a book of Six-Word Memoirs he’s currently putting together.

Campbell recently took a few minutes to answer six questions from SMITH Magazine.

Where are you based and what do you do there?
I’m based in DC. I served in the Peace Corps in El Salvador from 1974 to 1977, and since then, I have worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development on environmental health issues in developing countries. Read more »

Welcome to SMITH. Our tagline is “Everyone has a story—what’s yours?” and we hope you’ll tell one or more of yours here. The “Six Words About Work” contest featured on “Talk of the Nation” is over, but we welcome anyone who has arrived here via NPR or elsewhere, and hope you’ll stay awhile.

Here are some of the things happening on SMITH. For updates on contests, books, and live events, sign up for our monthly newsletter in the top-right corner of this page and join our vibrant Facebook group. You can follow us on Twitter for one well-chosen Six-Word Memoir each day.

The most popular thing to do is read and write Six-Word Memoirs. More than half-a-million Six-Word Memoirs have been shared on SMITH and on our site for teen scribes, SMITHTeens. We’ve created five books of Six-Word Memoirs, including a Japanese translation, and are always working on more. We’re also thrilled to announce that this fall both the Six-Word-a-Day calendar and Six-Word Memoir game will be released. For more on the history of Six Words, and the wild ways the form is being used around the world, listen to Larry Smith’s talk at South by Southwest, “How To Create an Internet Phenomenon for Peanuts,” or watch his video at the 2010 PopTech conference.

You can read and writer longer stories in one of our many Story Projects. The Moment is a place for stories, told in words, photographs, and comics, about turning points, revelations, epiphanies, and other dramatic changes that had a profound impact on your life. Harper Perennial will release a book of more than 125 “Moments” in January 2012. Read more »

August’s Member of the Month, Kirk Citron, insists that “some stories are more important than others.” Not long ago, SMITH Magazine caught Citron’s TED 2010 talk about his work on The Long News, a blog featuring news stories that will still matter 50, 100, or even 10,000 years from now. “As you can imagine,” says Citron, “there aren’t many.” We got to wondering what Citron’s personal “long news” might be.

“I Almost Missed It,” Citron’s story for The Moment project and the same-titled book coming out in January 2012, is about Citron’s chance meeting with a cute redhead who eventually became his wife. “There’s nothing you can do to plan for the coincidences and contingencies that will come your way,” writes Citron. “And they’re likely to be more important than whatever else you think is important at the time.”

Recently Kirk Citron took a few minutes to answer Six Questions from SMITH Magazine. Read more »

Ashley Allen, Member of the Month for July, is known as three-monkeys on SMITH, and has written more than 500 stories, in nearly every section of SMITH. One of her longer, most personal stories is found in The Moment project. “A Conversation with My Dad” is a tribute to the stalwart yet awkward support of her father in the days preceding her teenage abortion. “It was the first time I’d written about the experience since it happened twenty years ago,” says Allen. “When I wrote about it, it was a relief, and I was able to forgive myself a little for the choice I made.”

Allen, who contributes to SMITH from Leesburg, VA, keeps busy raising her three young sons. “I have my hands full,” she says. “I know this for a fact because I hear it all the time from strangers observing me at Target.” Yet she still makes time to pursue her two big dreams: write a book and become a rock star. Recently, rocker/writer Ashley Allen took a few minutes out of her day to answer six questions from SMITH Magazine contributing editor Vivian Chum.

How did you first come to start writing on SMITH Magazine?
I saw a link that one of my friends posted on Facebook to the Six-Word Memoir page. I joined, came up with my first memoir, hit “submit,” and by some act of God, I actually won “Memoir of the Day” the following day! Read more »

“I’m inspired by outsiders of all shapes, sizes, socioeconomic levels, and worldviews,” says June’s Member of the Month, Sara Lovelace from Memphis, TN. “We live in an extremely conformist culture. Those who rebel against it, even in the smallest ways, fascinate and inspire me.”

Recently, in a Moment story, “The Crue,” Sara shared her story of how an outsider—a belter of Motley Crue tunes from trailer-park country—shook her out of her self-proclaimed WASP mindset during a childhood slumber party. “I knew that I belonged in that Camaro with the Crue,” Sara writes, “and somehow sensed that cotillions were not a part of my future.”

To find out more about Sara’s inspired life, check out her answers to our six questions, below. Read more »

Storytelling and advocating for the rights of people with mental disabilities are one in the same for New York-based Allan Goldstein, who became the primary caretaker for his mentally disabled brother Fred in 1998 after both their parents had passed away. By then, Fred had already spent most of his life in institutions. “It was stunning when Fred and I slept under the same roof for the first time in 35 years,” says Allan.

“As Fred’s link to the ‘typical’ world, I had a lot to learn—about Fred; about the bureaucracy surrounding him; about being a big brother and guardian,” explains Allan. “I did a great deal of reading about intellectual and developmental disabilities—what they are; why they exist; society’s changing attitudes; and the groundbreaking heroes. I then wrote to understand.”

In his piece in our “My Life So Far” project, “An Unanticipated Love,” Allan writes about the romance between Fred and a mentally disabled woman named Michele, and Allan’s struggle to understand what romantic love means to Fred in light of his cognitive limitations.

Read more about the brothers on Allan’s Finding Fred blog, and check out Allan’s responses to SMITH’s six questions, below. Read more »