The Power of Six

The longer I write and teach writing, the more I see that living well and writing well are one in the same.

This week in my AP Lit class we've been working with the Six-Word Memoir form. Taken from the Smith Magazine website, a history of the form is as follows:

Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." In November 2006, SMITH Magazine reignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own Six-Word Memoirs. . . Since then, Six-Word Memoir project has become a global phenomenon and a bestselling book series.

I've introduce the genre in class as we attempt to refine our writing and be more effective at the sentence level and in our overall focus. Students created their own six-word memoirs this week that describe their day, week, semester, first love, life philosophy, etc. So far, the process has been fun for me; I get to see a lot of student personality in a short bit of writing, and they get to be creative, personal, and entertaining. They get to be real. It's amazing what kind of energy the opportunity to be real can inject into a high school classroom.

I told them this week that there are three main goals that using this writing form serves:

1. Maximize your writing space. Waste no words. Say more with less.
2. Pay attention to what your audience is seeing and thinking.
3.  Know exactly what you want to say. No verbal throat-clearing. No meandering. Just precision.

As I reflect on these activities and the goals therein, I realize that most interactions we have with others each day are six-word stories, one after another, with the same demands on the author.

For we should be able to say more with less. If we make each action count, seeing the consequence and value in every word in every conversation, we no longer run the risk of miscommunication or missed opportunities. If we maximize our metaphorical writing space, in this case the minutes we spend, and try to purposefully use each minute available, relationships will be strengthened, both with those whom we already know and those with whom we should. If you only had six words to say each day to your children, what would they be? Or your spouse? Or your best friend? If you only had six minutes to spend with them today, what would your actions say? The ability to select words and actions that matter, that speak beyond the time they take, is the ability to multiply influence and grace.

And we must pay attention to our audience. To what they're seeing and thinking about our words and actions. As I said to my students this week, intentions don't really matter. What matters is the reality for the reader. Their perception is king if they are, in fact, your audience. It matters not what you meant to say. They don't care what's in your head if what's on your face and in your tone doesn't match. I had my students take an essay they had written and boil it down to six-words. I then had them exchange essays with another student and ask them to write six words on what they thought the point of the essay was and then compare. This allowed students to not only consider an audience, but to hear from them as well. 

In your interactions tomorrow, there will be an audience. There will be audience members you speak to, and audience members you don't. Some in the audience will get more words and actions from you than others. But they're all reading. And that should increase the pressure we feel and the urgency to act and speak on purpose. Audience matters. To pretend, as many are in the fashion of doing, that "I don't care what anyone else thinks," is a first-rate cop-out. It's a fallacy. We all publish, every day. Someone will read it. 

Two statements from me generally get my students' attention and focus: "Other people will read this" and "Your grade depends on this." They view everything else as practice or inconsequential. I rarely get their best under any other circumstance. We do not have the luxury in our daily dealings of waiting for an announcement that we will have an audience to answer to or a sovereign grade-dispenser. It's simply a reality. Consider that audience. Embrace the heightened responsibility for your words and actions.

Finally, we should have that level of laser-focus in who we are and what we want our story to be. Certainly we are far more complicated than a six-word statement, and our lives tell a much more complex tale. But should they? Or should what we believe in and value be so firm in our minds and so central to our being that it affects every action and relationship and conversation? And should others be able to see that story and that philosophy in everything that we do? If our actions tell various and varied six-word memoirs, perhaps we have more thinking to do about the skeletal structure upon which all the muscles and ligaments of our lives hang.

The six-word memoir has it's limitations. But is has power in it as well. And to be better at communicating in other writing forms, viewing them through the lexical limit of six is an effective strategy. Placing the same constraints and pressures in all forms of communication, therefore, should have a similar effect.

The Blogger Returns to Run

In January I gave a sermon on Hebrews 12, which contributed (in part) to my blog writing absence of late. The passage the sermon was over compares a life lived in faith with running a race. As part of the metaphor, the author of Hebrews encourages the audience to "throw off everything that hinders," just as a runner sheds all extra weight or burdens when competing. Referring to all in our lives that isn't necessarily sin but that keeps us from running hard and running well, the text is a call to examine our lives, or our "race," and see what's slowing us down in our pursuit of the finish line.

One of my favorite statements from the sermon is this: "If you want to know what good in your life is getting in the way of your best, start running hard." When that sentence popped up during the creation of the sermon, I knew I had something that I wanted to hone in on personally.

It's easy to carry around a lot of extra and convince myself that it's good and brings me joy when I forget that I'm running any kind of race. I even allow myself to think about my life as many different races, that all have different race days, and all deserve some training from me. But when I commit, or recommit (as is so often the case) to running hard and running my race, I notice I can barely get out of the gate with all that I'm carrying.

If you want to know what's slowing you down in whatever it is you are pursuing, start pursuing it with a singularity of purpose. Decide that you're going to make it happen, no matter the cost. Hold all else loosely, and see what you must give up. If giving up what you have to give up to get it isn't worth it, you'll know the race you're running is the wrong race. Count the cost, and see if you're okay with the price. It's a question that deserves to be asked, whether your race is career success, strong family life, marathon running, or a devoted life of faith. And you'll never be able to truly answer the question unless you run hard.

And if you find out it's not worth it, that you don't want to throw off that which is slowing you down in this pursuit, if you're not willing to run hard, should you really be running in that direction at all?

Unfortunately, the race we are often most tempted to run is the race of comfort. The weight or hindrances that slow us down are ambition, love, sacrifice, and even joy. Those things slow down our immediate comfort. They delay our resting, slow us down in our pursuit of a comatose sameness, so much so that we are willing to shed them in our run. Dreams and risk endanger comfort. Love worth having spits in the face of contentment and relaxation. Lasting joy is often paired with immediate difficulty. So we shed them, casting them aside like superfluous clothing on a sweat-drenched summer run.

I'm not sure anyone knowingly does this. No one says, "Today I'm giving up love so I can just be me," or "my life goals are really slowing down my race to the couch." But how often are the little battles for love and faith and dreams shirked aside in the present for another hour in front of the TV?

We have become a culture of "feelings." I know this because I'm on the front lines of cultural shifts in the high school classroom. The changing public opinion polls and wavering priorities of society are reflected directly in the mouths of those of 16--18 years old voices reacting (however unwilling) to literature. And what I am blown away by now, as I've seen it progress in frequency over the past couple of years, is the number of sentences coming out of their mouths that begin with "I feel. . ." Whether talking about breakfast, politics, Shakespearean poetry, or the NFL playoffs, I hear "I feel" begin their responses at an uncanny rate. Feeling is reality to them. They've been told to worship at that temple.

Running a worthy race, and running that race well, is about far more than a feeling, though. You will almost always feel like comfort. That is your soul's default race. On most days you will not feel like training, whatever that training may be. I don't often feel like praying. I don't feel like writing. And I don't feel like sacrificial love. I know the value of a training routine, regardless of what I feel like. I wrote more prayer in 2015 than I did in the previous four years combined because I knew I needed to establish a routine. I didn't always feel like it. In fact, I rarely did. But I always felt like I wanted to be a guy who ran hard and ran well in the race of faith. And I never felt good about the race of comfort.

So I go back into training. I poke and prod for the extra that hinders, for the good in the way of the great, and for the discipline to cast aside the not so good that decays all running pursuits.

Feelings beware.