A few months ago, I signed up for a Twitter account. The main reason was because if you asked the Old Spice Man a question on Twitter, he’d respond with a personalized video. My plan was to ask him, “What is the future of literary fiction?” for an online panel I was on.  But the same day I got a Twitter account, the Old Spice Man retired.  Apparently, he’s starring in a movie with Jennifer Aniston now.

So, for weeks, this Twitter account just sat and did nothing.  And now, I’ve decided to put it to use.  Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word story he was quite proud of:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

And those six words tell you everything you need to know about Hemingway. Not really.

Following Hemingway’s lead, I decided to post my own six-word stories on Twitter, one a week.  I have no idea whether I’ll be able to come up with 52 of them this year, but I’m looking forward to the challenge.  Some of them will make it onto this blog.  So far, here’s what I’ve come up with:

Opened chest: yet another treasure map.

The glass palace lasted a month.

New television show: prison riot cookoff.

The monkey butler didn’t work out.

In Soviet Russia, novel finishes you.

Okay, so that last one wasn’t quite a story.  Follow the posts in realtime: @robertyune.

Related: The Old Spice Man narrowly avoids certain death, from Newsweek.

Six-word Memoirs, from SMITH Magazine

More Six-word Stories from Wired