Say Less, Say Better, Say What?
A Substack mash-up, the new Six Word app, proud and published student authors, a workplace prompt, and we begin with food, glorious, food...
The Art of Noticing & Six Words: A Substack Mash-Up
One of my favorite Substacks is The Art of Noticing by journalist Rob Walker. I’m a fan and friend of Rob’s, whose writing and fascinating side projects connect the intersection of storytelling and culture, business, technology, consumption, and the arts in ways, well, most of us have never noticed. Rob’s been asking his Substack readers for their favorite icebreakers and one that caught my eye was Alex Hidalgo’s, “Using only food: Where did you grow up?”
I asked Rob if I could give Alex’s icebreaker a six word spin as a topic for the Six Word app (now in beta; see next item): How would you describe your hometown in six foods? Rob shared the link with his community and like the Flintstones meeting the Shmoo (I’m talking to you, my GenX friends), a mash-up was born. To our new The Art of Noticing friends I say: Welcome, you are my people! And here are a few Sixes that popped into the topic shortly after Rob shared our collaboration. Can you guess each writer’s hometown?
Hickory pit old sheep bbq heaven. —Bratliff
Pizza, slider, Jeni's, bratwurst, buckeye, wings. —Khewes
Peanuts, peaches, biscuits, gravy, grits, tea. —Kahmed
Adobo. Lechon. Shumai. Ngohiong. Halo-halo. Mango. —MRio
Nonfat, free-range, fresh pressed, organic air. —moremelanie
Applebees. All we have is Applebees. —Brittanydhicks
How would you describe your town in six foods? Come play on the new Six Word app.
About that Six Word App: The Keys to Our Car
The Six-Word Memoir app is here! Our beta version of the app is a tool that enables anyone to create a Six-Word Memoirs topic of their choosing as a way to celebrate an event, a community, a company, or an organization. The plan is to allow users to click a few buttons and create their own Six-Word book. How many different ways could you use this app? The only limit is your imagination.
• Birthdays (“Share six words for Allie on her 30th”)
• Weddings (“Six word wishes or advice for the couple”)
• Graduations (“Six words of advice for the proud grad”)
• Company meetings and retreats (“Hey team! Describe our mission, vision, or values in six words”)
• Common hobbies, causes, or goals (“Six words on birding, climate change, pickleball prowess”)
If you’re having a wedding this fall and want to invite your guests to share six word wishes and advice, please get in touch . We’ll make you a free book of Sixes as a thank you for sharing your feedback.
SixContest! Random, Strange, Wild Acts of Kindness
Journalist Anne Herbert once wrote, "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." For SixContest #146, we asked you to share stories about kindness from the most unexpected places.
Sixers described the healing power of words ("Your compliment helped more than therapy" — Chaol) and unconditional acts of love ("French toast brightens my brother's day." — TajA). Some wrote memoirs about seemingly minor yet thoughtful gestures ("A little girl smiled at me." — MerriAnne) and how it brightened their days ("Polished by kindness, I now glow." — MichelleTheresa). Others talked about the gift of giving ("Coffee on the house, warm feeling." — rub.bell773) and the serendipitous joy of sharing ("Son, uncharacteristically, shared his ice cream." — L.D. Smith).
We’ll be giving away three Six-Word Memoir books. So be sure to leave a memoir in the comments or on the Six-Word Memoirs website by September 30th for a chance to win a book of your choice.
Make Your Own Classroom Book — Just like Elizabeth Brandstrom’s Students at Maranatha Christian Academy
At Maranatha Christian Academy in Brooklyn Park, MN, teacher Elizabeth Brandstrom saw Six-Word Memoirs as an ideal icebreaker for students to collaborate and write about self-expression. "I think it's unintimidating to write just six words; that's all it is. And so they feel like they can jump in there, and it tends to open up so much more for them," says Brandstrom. The activity quickly expanded into a publishing project that culminated in their own personalized classroom book. Read more about Elizabeth Brandstrom and her class of proud and published authors on the Six in Schools blog.
Six in Schools makes teaching the six word format and publishing a classroom book an easy way to celebrate creative minds. Students gain confidence and pride after seeing their memoirs in a book and recognizing each other as published authors. Ready to start your own classroom project? Click below for the why and the how.
Get Your Free Classroom Kit
More tools for teachers:
• Larry wrote a piece for Edutopia about how to teach a short, meaningful Six-Word Memoir lesson.
• On our Classroom of the Month blog , you can read hundreds of Six-Word Memoir classroom success stories filtered by grade and subject matter.
Short Cuts: Six-Word Reviews
From Substack: Whether you're a fledgling or seasoned writer, Amy Guth’s Writing Prompts for Weird Times is an excellent source of daily ideas to keep the words moving. Guth asks her audience to write about their surroundings, memories, and ambitions and shares advice on pitching ideas — all drawn from her experiences as a journalist and broadcaster.
Six-Word Memoir's Danielle Shum's Six-Word Review: “Practiced inspiration for publishing with impact.”
From the World: What if you could revisit the wildest, most compelling, or deeply confusing time in your life? In the podcast I Was Never There, a mother-daughter team revisits the people who shared their life on a back-to-the-land community in West Virginia in the 1970s and 80s. What are they looking for? An answer to the mysterious disappearance of their friend Marsha, the pint-sized suburban mom turned hippie/rock club owner and drug dealer at the center of this community. Along the way, our hosts try to make sense of their own lives then and now.
Larry Smith’s Six-Word Review: “Process your past, don’t outrun it.”
Six @ Work: One Question, Six Words
Like a lot of lanes on the now-fifteen year journey with Six-Word Memoirs, the idea that the six word form could be useful in work popped up organically when The Hired Guns founder Allison Hemming asked me to teach a course on elevator pitching. Since that Tuesday evening in The Hired Gun’s conference room I’ve talked to teams at Dell, Twitter, Intuit, Levi’s, Snap, OhioHealth, JPMorganChase, and seemingly half the companies in Columbus, Ohio (shout out!). I recently had an hour with the animation team at Netflix and our time together reminded me of perhaps the most important takeaway for using six words in the workplace: It’s a way to remind yourself, your teammates, and the larger organization around you what your role is and why you do it.
When you’re challenged to answer the question, “How would you describe your job in six words?,” you are forced to dig deep into what you do and then release that short, sharp story to your peers. You can also learn a lot about those around you. I was doing a workshop at Levi’s with members of many different teams when it came time for our “Six Word Slam.” Describing her job in six words, a quiet woman in the back announced, “Who doesn’t love the payroll lady?” Laughter, recognition, and connection followed.
A Picture is Worth 6,000 Words
Since you can be anything be kind
My favorite food is sugar and more sugar.