yet another new idea

So Robert was saying to me the other day, "You should edit a short story anthology."

This was right after a flurry of roleplay posts, where I editted one of his posts for him, and he liked my work. Heh. I'm good at editting. I've been doing it since I was a child, editting stuff for my mother whose English isn't too terribly good. My family seems to take it for granted that they can just hand me stuff and I'll edit it for them. The most recent big project was my sister's grad school app essays. My god were those ever boring! But then, what can one expect if the point is to get into an MBA program... anyway. She got in to one of them, so I guess I must not have done too bad of a job even though I had to force myself to do them.

Anyway, so a short story anthology editor. Hmm. It sounded interesting for not too much effort on my part beyond what I'm already doing for people for free. Getting short stories probably wouldn't be a problem, considering that lots of people write them and there are very few markets. The capital would be the biggest issue. This year's funds are committed to upgrading all of my electronics equipment (computer, mainly), and possibly house-buying (:p). So maybe next year I might try something?

My original thought was to start by writing a short story myself, then figure out what topic I could call it, and then do a call for 12-13 more of them. Hopefully by the time this happens, Robert will have published something and gotten his name out, so he can be my pro headliner to promote the book. ;)

However, my mind started spinning anyhow. Despite all of the other things it's supposed to be ruminating on instead, I've got a really dumb (but possibly workable, if it isn't too dumb) idea for an anthology. I thought I'd post it up here and see what other people thought.

What if I were to take a classic story - one that everyone knows, and is old enough not to be copyrighted anymore - and turn it into variations on a theme?

(a bit of ruminating later)

Suppose I started with a nursery rhyme, such as "Hey diddle diddle." Then the assignment would be: Write a short story describing what the heck the rhyme is about, from the point of view of one of the characters in it. So for "Hey diddle diddle" there would be: the cat, the fiddle, the cow, the moon, the little dog, the dish, and the spoon. If I asked for two authors per character (two interpretations apiece), that would be 14 stories.

All right. Feel free to throw your rotten tomatoes at me now. :0