num_pages: 225
description: Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanitysix words at a time.When Ernest Hemingway famously wrote For Sale: baby shoes never worn he proved that an entire story can be told using a half-dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs they proved a whole real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating hilarious shocking and moving. From small sagas of bittersweet romance (Found true love married someone else) to proud achievements and stinging regrets (After Harvard had baby with crackhead) these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-size pieces. The original edition of Not Quite What I Was Planning spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and thanks to massive media attentionfrom NPR to the The New Yorkerthe six-word memoir concept spread to classrooms dinner tables churches synagogues and tens of thousands of blogs. This deluxe edition has been revised and expanded to include more than sixty never-before-seen memoirs. From authors Elizabeth Gilbert Richard Ford and Joyce Carol Oates to celebrities Stephen Colbert Mario Batali and Joan Rivers to ordinary folks around the world everyone has a six-word story to tell.
language: English
title: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
publisher: Harper Perennial