eduify | write faster

By: Julia Jackson

Meet Larry Smith

Meet Larry Smith: writer-editor extraordinaire. His writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Men’s Journal, Popular Science, Slate, and Salon. He was also the senior editor at ESPN The Magazine, executive editor at Yahoo! Internet Life, articles editor at Men’s Journal, founding editor of P.O.V., editor-in-chief of Egg, and an editor of Dave Eggers’ Might magazine. His online magazine, SMITH Mag, provides a host of resources for everyday writers, and also features the Six-Word Memoir project, which has produced enough memorable memoirs to publish a series of Six Word anthologies. He enthusiastically agreed to answer some questions for us for our third installment of Writing Careers: Real Tips from Real Writers.

JHJ: What would you define as “good” writing?

LS: Honest and authentic work in whatever form of writing it takes—full-length book, blog, tweet, haiku, six-word memoir, comic, whatever—that comes from a place of passion.

JHJ: What has been your favorite project? How did you achieve your objective?

LS: After years of working at traditional, editor-driven, top-down magazines, I started SMITH as a more user-driven, bottom-up kind of magazine, one where professionals and aspiring writers could all tell and share stories (with some curation by editors). I wanted the site to be focused on personal stories because the stories that resonated most deeply with me—ones I wrote myself, ones I loved reading—always seemed to have a personal through line.

So “personal storytelling” has always been the concept behind my overall favorite professional project, SMITH Mag. And while it has changed in terms of look and the reader/writer experience on it, the mission remains the same as it was when I ran around the publishing world in early 2003 trying to get funding or find a publishing partner: a user-driven, editor-curated online magazine.

We launched in January 2006 and since then we’ve been trying different projects, some of which have worked really well, some not as well (one of my own six-word memoirs is, “Threw spaghetti at wall; some stuck”). My two favorite projects are at the two extremes of what we do. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a nonfiction webcomic that tells the very big story of Hurricane Katrina through the very specific prism of seven people who survived it. It was an intense, complicated editor-driven endeavor that involved a lot of shoe-leather reporting and coordination (and went from 17-part webcomic on SMITH to expanded book  from Pantheon). In A.D.’s case, we tell the story the way we always try to on SMITH: one person at a time.

The Six Word Memoir Project

Then there’s the Six-Word Memoir project, which is much more “bottom up” — anyone can submit a six-word memoir, and hundreds of thousands of people across the world have. Rachel Fershleiser (who co-edits the project and book series with me) and I read each and every six-word memoir, and work hard to curate ) them for the community (via daily editors’ favorites, sending out one six-worder a day on Twitter, and then putting some in books). But the thing is, if you submit a six-word memoir it’s automatically posted to the site. And—poof—you’re a published author. That’s a very powerful feeling for people.

What’s more, we get email after email from people who have been inspired to start, or restart writing, after just getting those six words down. We hear from teachers from kindergarten to grad school who have used the form in their classes; people running after-school programs, post-traumatic stress disorder facilities, battered women’s shelters, and preachers and rabbis alike have all told us how this simple form of storytelling has proved to be quite powerful for their own work. Above all, I love the Six-Word Memoir project because anyone can do it, from bestselling writers like Elizabeth Gilbert and Junot Diaz, celebrities such as Stephen Colbert and Sarah Silverman, and thousands of Joe the Plumbers and Jane the Teachers across the world. I launched SMITH Magazine as a place for passionate, populist, participatory, and addictive storytelling—you get all that with the Six-Word Memoir project.

JHJ: Who or what inspires you?

LS: Lately, I seem to be most inspired by the very young and the very old. By that I mean that when I see members of SMITH Teens (SMITH Mag’s site for 13-19 year olds) writing 500, 1000, 2000 six-word memoirs I am touched, tickled, occasionally shocked, and often blown away. The teens aren’t afraid to put themselves out there, they’re totally addicted to self-expression, they know the story of their lives can change every day. Then the very old, or perhaps a more correct term is “very experienced.” I’m thinking of storytellers who have done what they love doing, unfailingly, for years and years—people like the late Studs Terkel, Harvey Pekar, Alison Bechdel, Ira Glass, David Isay from StoryCorps, Sandy Close from the Pacific News Service. And in terms of old as in “age,” who isn’t inspired by an octagenarian blogger or new YouTube star? I love it!

JHJ: What tips can you offer young writers?

LS: My philosophy of writing is “write drunk, edit sober.” That doesn’t mean be Charles Bukowski. It means: just get the words down. Spill them out onto the page. Don’t hold back a thing and don’t be afraid of making a big old mess. Just write. Then go back to those words—the next hour or next day—and start to clean it up.

JHJ: What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you?

LS: Don’t panic about having a set, defined, overly programmed career path. Jumping off the path you think you’re supposed to be on won’t slow you down, but in fact open you up to new experiences, new places, new people, and new ways of seeing. And that—so obvious to me now, but maybe it wasn’t when I was getting started—makes you a better writer.