Contest: The One-Word Title of Your Memoir
Monday, November 15th, 2010
The top three books in The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for the week of November 14:
1. Life by Keith Richards
2. Broke by Glenn Beck
3. Earth by Jon Stewart
So, what’s the one-word title of your memoir? Leave it in the comments here, with, optionally, a one-sentence explanation why (and, yes, your sentence can be more than six words). Erin McKean, founder of our favorite place for linguistic treats, Wordnik, will pick her favorite. The winning scribe gets a copy of one of the above books, or, if you don’t like those options, you can choose SMITH Mag’s most recent Six-Word Memoir book.
Contest ends on November 19 (5pm est). Enter as often as you like. On Twitter, tag it: #1wordmemoir.
Shards.
Journeywoman
Undefined
Tenacious
F*#$K!
Poised
Vamped
Finally (because after all the ups, downs, trials, and tribulations of life - eventually it all comes to an end and then we’re all at peace - finally.)
Runaway
Overcaffeinated.
Ideal for running a web community, a little tough to live with…
Used
Ambivalence
- because my feelings and thoughts always seem to be conflicted and can never be straightforward (and I just like this word as well )
Adapted.
Because life (on the large and small scales) is about change, and this memoir adapts my memories and experiences into print. (Who knows? If it’s good, maybe a film or made-for-TV movie, too!)
Notwithstanding
Assimilated.
Not only am I a black man who walks successfully through a predominately white world, I’m a geek who as integrated successfully into society.
Dilettante
Hence
Sigh
Hope
…because despite it all, i still have the hope for a better tomorrow.
Pass
Caveats.
Anyways……
I was once encouraged to consider this word as a prompt to jog my thoughts past judjments and comments from everyone and anyone around me. After I listen and nod my head, I think (despite the lack of gramatical correctness) “Anyways, what will I do now” It brings everything back to my responsabilty for my choices.
Inamorata
gadabout
siren
Medicated.
(It’s how I get up, how I fall asleep, and how I survive everything in between.)
Word
Regards.
Toughgrrl
-I don’t take any crap from anyone and most men are threatened by this.
Yo
-My favorite saying.
Freedom
-After my divorce, it’s what rang true! (and my ears are still blissfully ringing!)
Witch
-Fits me perfectly.
More!
Pants
Veganized
Passport
Ever since I grew up in a farm town, I’ve been itching to land somewhere else, and I’ve lived around the world from Denmark to New Zealand. It took staying in place in San Francisco to find true love - to an Italian.
My memoir - my real one - is entitled ACCIDENTAL LESSONS. The story of a rookie teacher and his road to self-discovery.
But - I think the memoir could easily be entitled ACCIDENTAL.
That says a lot, don’t you think?
David B
Author, ACCIDENTAL LESSONS
Laughable
Him
(the last few years were all shaped because of that one person)
Peripheraltastique
I think that at this point in my life I’ve been living on the outskirts of other people’s success and passions— but in a fantastic way where I’ve been taken wonderful places both physically and mentally. Thus— peripheral + fantastic!
Me
courtesy of Katharine Hepburn and Ricky Martin
Replay
would be mine own
Real
my experiences in the last few years are teaching me to try and be truly authentic, to be myself.
responderé
Hope
My 14-year-old nephew reports that his would be, “Sexy.”
Inebriated
Confusiated…
Dogged.
(brought my 4 dogs to visit my kids and their 5 dogs)
Tailspin
angsty
alight
Lies
Juicy.
Bonvivant.
Dandy.
Tremensely.
Well,
Lugubrious.
Nutshell.
Lymphomartini. The story of my most recent year and a half; the fear from my lymphoma diagnosis, and how we overcame that fear to royally kick some ass.
Tom & I are in similar boats — per my cancer tweet yesterday:
Melanomaniac
static
MOIST
The tears, the tenderness, the heat-drenched drama.
Tears. Tenderness. Sweat-drenched drama. Mmm hmm.
Solipsism
(A LOVE STORY!)
alternatively:
Solipsist
(The story of moi)
Wander-lust
tales of an emotionally promiscuous girl with an insatiable need to.. travel.
Perplexed.
(About so many things, and on a daily basis.)
Juxtaposed
From conception to marriage, careers to parentage, my life can be viewed as a series of juxtapositions.
Self-helped.
(I’m a total self-help book junkie.)
Laments
scaredoflivinghopefulforabettertomorrow
I guess it won’t count, right? If not, my word is oxymoron
Swexican, because my mom is Swedish.
Worldly. (I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and this is their term for non-believers.)
Untimely.
(Because so many life events happen at inconvenient and ill-timed intervals.)
Wordsmith
Haredi
Blue
Doormat
Sisyphus
Gringa
[Grew up as the only American girl in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.]
Wait
unquenchable
-my eternal flame
Bogtrotter.
No straight, easy paths in my life. Scenic, though.
Ahhh!
( memoir of a life focused on the all together too brief moments of joy & bliss in a world full of pain & misery)
Riptide
Satisified.
Kapakahi
(Hawaiian for confused or mixed-up.)
Perfect.
Drama
neurosity
it’s a mix of neurosis and tenacity
Diligent
Survivor
Faithful
Worker
Klong
“[A] word coined by Frank Mankiewicz to describe ”a sudden rush of crud to the heart,”’ such rush caused by the realization that all that time, you had been wrong about something.
multihued
Tripe— takes guts to survive out there
Gestalt
Unrequited — we love life far more than it loves us
Genitalia —- everyone will want to read my memoir
Reared
Welcome — An invitation to a life of exceptional mediocrity
Stirred— A life unlived by James Bond
Laugh —It’s the quintessential defense mechanism
Homogenized — Succumbing to the American melting pot.
Lucky
Bullshit-ed
- Don’t think my mother ever told me the truth!!!
Teenager…
“Distracte…”
“Almost”
Shameless
Chameleon
Reassembled
Restoring the shards of youth, I want to be a grown up when I grow up.
If — For all those things left undone
Edited — To ensure our legacy is almost real
With — the Most Wanted preposition in the English language
Pi — Enigmatic, life imitates unknowable numbers — we simply do not know the ending
Lust — The driver behind most of our life-shaping accidents.
Should’ve — Without the second-guessing, what fun would a memoir be?
Child — We begin as children and end the same — with older skin.
Mom — Born of Mom, be a Mom, love a Mom — life’s all about Mom.
Ball — Sports, sex, prom, bawl, rolling stone, completeness…
Highschool
Done!
Stick a fork in me…
Loon — About to land jelly side down
And — And that’s all there is…
Claustrophobia — It’s not easy being that mountain guy in the cave
Yin
Yang
Sleep — Finally get to rest
Dead — Buried alive by my last chapter.
And?
Homonymy - We’re all in a state of being so many different things at once, in the guise of being just one thing.
Disrupted.
I came. I saw. I obsessed.
unfinished
Potentially?
My life sometimes seems to be about potential; had it, lost it, tried to regain it, tried to realise it. If there’s ever a book, maybe I will have done.
Onomatopoeia. As a musician, actress, and writer, my life has been all about words and sound and how they relate to each other.
Eclectic. Because it has been and still is.
Pull
Unexpected
Because my life has been punctuated by a series of surprises.
Mantourage
(an almost true love story)
“Invisible” All my life I have felt people have just looked right through me as if I wasn’t there, ignored me, forgotten me.
F.A.B
This is an intersting acronym I made up after being called a “FAT ASS BITCH” by my former sister in law. Hey, if you don’t laugh you’ll cry right? Turn those lemons into lemonade…whatever you say bounces of me and sticks to you and all that Jazz! So yes, I guess I am F.A.B…my def of it not hers.
Rationalizations.
Woops.
Palimpsest. I am the sum of my incarnations, each one a revised manuscript, a displaced testament to lost time.
Clearly
Because I have lupus fog and my blog is called “On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever”
Time.
There’s never enough, and I wish I’d been born in a different time.
Chaos - because I live in a constant state of chaos between work, family, friends, etc.
Normal — Ironic exposure of this Utopian no-such-place
Posted — aka The End
Unfinished
Compulsive
Distracted
Qualia
Because you can’t tell “what it’s like” to live my life, unless you’ve lived it.
Next! — Life is a möbius
strip bread line; hop on…
Lie! — Just add “f” and shake, don’t stir . . .
Undecided–because indecision is the key to flexibility!
Actually…
Retro-spect
Ineffable!
Skirting
Moments!
Extra-Ordinary
Extraordinary or extra ordinary? Either one could be quite fitting.
Pork — horny male pig, chunky, loves bacon, meets carnivorous world, and then “Pork!” springs love affair with Scout and Boo, lasts a lifetime.
Boo — Life is a bogeyman from Stephen King’s closet until one meets her Guardian Angel, Boo Radley…
Ishmael — Everyman’s furtive wish: Call me . . .
McMurphy — Always wanted to help him choke the Big Nurse and hoist him, alive, out that impossible window . . .
Allie — Like Holden’s lost brother, I too wrote poems in my baseball mitt, to pass those dull outfield moments, my roses in December.
Feastiality.
Onesomeness.
Experimental
POINTLESS.
Survived
McLovin’
Catatonic (confessions of an insomniac cat lady)
WithDrawn
As an artist, there’s so much more to me than meets the eye
cacophony
Egotistical
(A book all about the remarkable me)
Yes, I’m 13 minutes late–I’ve been baking muffins.
*sigh*
I’ll give one anyway…
‘Effervescent’
or
‘Eclectic’
Whatever.
(Apathy has become a survival skill.)
Unrequited.
I’ve been waiting five years.
Giggly.
I always crack and laugh under pressure. I have a truly maniacal laugh.
Writer.
This word defines me the best. Throughout my life when faced with challenges, triumphs or defeats, one thing remains. My ability to pour my emotions on a page. I live, therefore, I write.
Ink
-I’m a tattooed writer, it’s all about the ink. Once you write it or stab it, it lasts forever…
“Almost”
because I almost make something of myself but fuck it up in the end.
Unstoppable.
No matter how much life knocks me down, I keep getting right back up and proving to it I can’t be stopped.
Fucked.
because i always either am, or want to be.
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