Looking for limits to school me, I seek ten deca-words. I caution myself against syllables. They stand between me and an utterance of truth. Truth. A quarter away from my limit, always.

Nearly a drabble, nearly a truth. Perhaps this is only half a drabble. Perhaps it is a half-truth.

Should I deal in either thing, in drabbles or truths? Will either school me toward something better? Will the boundary between me and truth be brought nearer by my hope to say a thing in these few words?

I answer myself: Respect the limits of truth. The drabbles will follow.

Aside from the four cardinal points of authors people have heard of, how many other people would they accept drabbles from? As a rough guess, that is.

And Gus writes the introduction.

I think this is a kick-ass idea. Were I still teaching English, I would use the resulting book as a teaching tool. As it is, I'll just buy a copy for everyone I know.

Obviously limiting ourselfs to ones that fit the 100 words or under word limit

No. The drabbles for the anthology would be 100 words exactly. The book would have certain touches in common with, say, Bird by Bird: the drabble not only as expression, but as a writing tool.

After all, you don't write eighteen or fourteen syllables and call it a haiku.

If people have a drabble that they've previously posted that they'd like to submit for consideration, and it's over/under 100 words, can they go back and edit it down/up to 100 words?

Gus: heh.

Connie: no idea yet. But they'd all come from here. Keep in mind that, the larger the pool of writers, the smaller the payout to each writer. I'm thinking probably somewhere between a dozen and 16 or so writers total, but I could be talking entirely out of my ass. Once I do the proposal, I can get a better idea as to how many.

Tep: hell yes.

I'm thinking probably somewhere between a dozen and 16 or so writers total, but I could be talking entirely out of my ass. Once I do the proposal, I can get a better idea as to how many.

I'm just thinking out loud, but could the anthology be structured by topic, choosing 12-16 topics, rather than authors?

I'm just thinking out loud, but could the anthology be structured by topic, choosing 12-16 topics, rather than authors?

Obviously, it depends on what BenBella would want to do, if they're even interested, but I like this idea, too.

The problem -- if you want to look at it that way -- is that they pay very little for essays in their other anthologies. This might wind up being a "paid in copies" deal, if there are a lot of authors involved, but that wouldn't matter to me.

Honestly, I wasn't even thinking about $$. At all. It never actually occurred to me. I'm just thrilled at the possibility of getting our words out.

(Yes, that was a Wonderfalls reference.)

I'm just thinking out loud, but could the anthology be structured by topic, choosing 12-16 topics, rather than authors?

Obviously, it depends on what BenBella would want to do, if they're even interested, but I like this idea, too.

I was actually planning on structuring it by topic, rather than writer. If it's being pitched as essentially a non-fiction deal, then the topic becomes the primary focus: using the variations on each topic to illustrate how different writers might interpret and use.

Amy, I'm assuming you have no objection to being one of the proposal "name legs"? Laura Anne has indicated she wants to play, so there's three.

Amy, I'm assuming you have no objection to being one of the proposal "name legs"? Laura Anne has indicated she wants to play, so there's three.

Not at all. And yay for Laura Anne playing!