Six Words and an Eggshell

 

Have you ever seen those six-word challenges? The ones where you are challenged to write your life story in six words?  They are amazing.  Six words strung together and voila!  A picture of a life. 
Incredible creativity -- the parring of words to the bare bone resulting in an image strong and resonant.

Jazzed by the idea, I figured I'd make mine, easy-peasy.  So I began.  I laced strings of adjectives, nouns, verbs and other grammer-related terms in odd combinations, looking for the six-gem necklace, but all I got was lumpy macramé (which I actually like but it wasn't what I was going for!).  The harder I tried, the more my strings of words twisted and snarled and came out looking like the discarded fishing line snagged at the end of the dock.

Finally, I put the pen away and stopped trying.  I didn't think I had it in me to put my life into a bite size morsel of prose.   I just was not creative enough.  And there is was -- six words that summed up my life.  I- just-was-not-creative-enough. :(

What a minute?  Had these words being rolling around in my head all this time?  Were these words  the ones that were keeping me from moving forward in a creative life? 

I decided then and there that I was not going to live that six-word life anymore.  It would no longer be my creed.  I was going to come out of my shell.  And there it was -- the six words danced their way from my soul onto the page -- I'm coming out of my shell. 

My toes did a little tap dance in their shoes because I knew, I knew, I knew what I had to do.  It was time to step outside my comfort zone and be creative in the best ways I knew how.  And that it would be enough.

To celebrate, I took this picture.....

It's a good reminder to get back out there whenever I get sidetracked by the wrong set of words rolling around in my mind.

Funny how six little words and an eggshell can change a perspective!

 -- Leah

The six-word challenges were started I believe, by Larry Smith of Six-Word Memoirs at SMITH Magazine.