Larry Smith is a writer whose work has appeared in Salon, Slate, Popular Science, and Men’s Health. More importantly he’s the founding editor of SMITHmagazine.net. A site entirely devoted to the art of storytelling and encourages you, the reader, to contribute. One of the many projects on the site is Six-Word Memoirs. It has been so successful that it has spawned a series of books. Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs is the first. There are more that 800 hundred contributions in one nice little package. Smith spoke to Chris Bowman about origins, community, and how a few words can lead to many.

Chris Bowman: First off the most obvious question, with Not Quite what I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs, what were you planning?

Larry Smith: Originally we started SMITH magazine as a participatory populist story telling community in January 2006. The idea was for a place where people who may consider themselves writers could write all personal stories. We always wanted to be a community where we had some professional editors involved and it was curated. I mean give them story projects. My Life So Far is a personal essay or part of your memoir in progress. Brushes With Fame you’d write about meeting celebrities. My Ex…that kind of stuff. We have other projects like non-fiction web comics and Memoirville, where we do interviews with up-and-coming or even famous memoirists. And all of that was going fine. We started with no money, a lot of volunteer labor and sweat. In November 2006 we decided to try this six-word memoir idea. The idea came from Hemingway, who was once challenged in a bar bet to write a six-word short story, For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn. The idea of six-words has shown up in different literary circles over time but no one had done a six-word memoir. It makes perfect sense for our readers because we are a community of storytellers.

CB: It has been said in a few places that text messaging is the death of the English language. And recently I read an article that cites Twitter as one of the reasons people are losing the appreciation for the rhythm of language. What’s your opinion when it comes to the state of our language?

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Noted humor publication The Wall Street Journal just published a lengthy story about one of Kasper Hauser's two (count 'em - two) forthcoming books, "Obama's Blackberry."

This is how Rob from Kasper Hauser describes their writing process: "It’s kind of like four clowns driving a clown car and each one has a steering wheel and at any time two of them are sad and there’s no food.”

You can check out the whole article here.

They even get a comment from Joe Biden's press representative. Apparently, the book isn't funny, because Joe Biden would never actually ask the President if he can leave at 4:45.

The Trailer for Kasper Hauser's upcoming book, Weddings of the Times.

I'm a milkshake enthusiast, always have been, so when I saw a cookbook called "Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes" in a book catalog a few months ago, I made sure to ask for a review copy. After all, who knows when The Sound of Young America might turn into The Splendid Table?

The book is really lovely, and author Adam Reid includes tons of amazing milkshakes, from the simple to the absurd. Last night, I made a cucumber lemon mint shake, and that was after looking for a relatively simple recipe. I couldn't wrap my head around Sweet Corn & Basil or Blackberry Lavender.

My favorite shake I've made from the book so far was a very simple one -- one that I actually managed from stuff I had sitting around my house.

It's called The Irish Breakfast Milkshake. There are no bangers or fried potatoes in it -- it's actually a tea shake.

It's very simple to make.

You start by steeping four black tea bags in about four ounces of boiling water. Then take out (and squeeze out!) the bags, and refrigerate the super-tea you've made until it's cool (half an hour or so).

In the blender, mix your tea with about eight scoops of french vanilla ice cream and about an ounce of honey. Be sure to use a spatula to push it down and mix it up a bit between whooshes of the blender.

The vanilla ice cream and the complex tea flavor play so wonderfully together, and that lovely honey sweetness is a perfect crowning touch. Super easy, super delicious.

All hail Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes!

Paul Bacon is the author of "Bad Cop," a memoir of his time in the New York Police Department. After September 11th, Bacon felt a calling to community service, but he was too old for his first choice, the fire department. He signed up for police academy instead, but he quickly found that he was ill-suited to the job.

Steven Berlin Johnson is a writer and entrepreneur who writes on the history of ideas. His books have included Everything Bad is Good for You, which suggested that contemporary popular culture is more challenging to the mind than it's accused of being, and The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, which tracked the spread of cholera in London in the mid-19th century as a way to understand the networked modern city. His newest book, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America tracks the life of the 18th century writer and scientist Joseph Priestley, and how his story can help us learn about the growth and development of ideas. Johnson also created the news discussion site plastic.com and the hyper-local site outside.in.

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Neil Gaiman is an award-winning writer in a number of forms. He broke ground in the world of comics with his 1980s series Sandman, which followed the god of sleep through a series of beautiful and sometimes terrifying adventures in the world of dreams. His books of prose include the acclaimed adult novel American Gods and the recent Newbury Medal-winning young adult book The Graveyard Book.

Gaiman's 2002 novel Coraline is the basis of Henry Selick's film of the same name. Selick is the master of stop motion animation behind the films The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, as well as the animated sequences in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He filmed Coraline in 3D, and talks about creating the movie's immersively beautiful visuals, and about adapting the book for the screen.

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Here's my second segment for the excellent Current TV. It's part of a larger pilot that may or may not end up being anything, we'll see. It's a video version of my interview with former Daily Show and Colbert Report Executive Producer Ben Karlin. Wow, that's a lot of Capital Letters. Enjoy!

Alan Zweibel is a comedy writer. He was an original writer on Saturday Night Live, helping to originate Weekend Update, and write many of Gilda Radner's signature characters. He also co-created the groundbreaking sitcom It's Garry Shandling's Show with Shandling, and wrote several films and on many other television projects. He also helped Billy Crystal develop the Broadway hit 700 Sundays. Most recently, he has been a producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, working with his old friend Larry David. His new book, a collection of short pieces, is called Clothing Optional.

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Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer, solo performer, actress and radio commentator. Her radio work includes contributions to This American Life, a commentary series, The Loh Life, and a science series, The Loh Down on Science. Her most recent book, Mother On Fire: A True Mother*(&ing Story About Parenting, concerns her efforts to get her daughter into "the right school," a road which ultimately ended at the neighborhood public elementary school.

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