Arthur Graham asked Leo X. Robertson:

Any good throwaway ideas for a book, like something you definitely won't be writing yourself? Also, can you write it for me?

Leo X. Robertson As usual, I started off trying to out-wit your response (“So essentially you want another book written that no one asked for/ will read?” was the best I came up with) but ended up settling on making a sobering point instead!

I’ll blog-post this also to maximise readership because as far as my experience goes, this is what I advise:

Any writer reading this should go sit down and write me a story called “The Acorn.” It’s as good a stimulus as any other. Calling it “The Acorn”, by the way, is non-negotiable. I’m a writer. I have convictions.
Writers have one week to do it. If the week passes and the story’s not done, bye bye. Oh, your kid, your dog, the connection wasn’t good, the idea didn’t come—do I give a shit? Bouncers outside Glasgow nightclubs told me the following when they spotted that I was clearly too drunk to let inside: “Try somewhere else.” (I say this to the writers, and it has the same implication: it won’t work here or elsewhere.)
If they write the story, they should then not just send me that story and think I should be thankful to have used any of their time at all, start blogging about it, ask me and others to like rate comment subscribe, no: that seems professional, but it isn’t.
They should wait a week, take another look at the story, see that it probably sucks, edit it if it’s salvageable OR write me a second story titled “The Acorn.” They should keep writing stories titled “The Acorn” until they have written the best thing they’ve ever written in their entire lives, just because some guy on the internet told them to!
Welcome to the creative process. Isn’t this how themed anthologies are formed? Isn’t writing more about grit, persistence, work, perspiration, than it is inspiration? Yes. Does a writer need to be an insufferable ponce in order to get a few words on the page? Talking about what she does, why she does it, what type of fucking pencil she uses, the difference she’s making? Absolutely not. Just get it done. Feed the muse anything and sit patiently awaiting what she gifts you (this is not poncery because it’s how the process actually works.)
Once you’ve spent a good deal of time discovering these stories inside you/ in the ether, about acorns, you realise, wow, so I could sit down any day and discover a story about anything?! Now you understand the importance of writing everyday. Now you’re hooked. Now you must. Now you are a writer. Because anyone can write a million-word novel without any restrictions on time or quality. Anyone can write A story titled “The Acorn” (I was going to say “a story about an acorn”, but it doesn’t have to be), but few have the tenacity to write five, ten, fifty, and pick the best. There’s no guarantee, even, that after fifty, any of them are good. (Unlikely, but possible.) Writers acknowledge this uncertainty, and write in spite of it. No one is asking us to do this, so we must impose the constraints on ourselves and take them seriously. Good writing loves constraints.
Okay so from here on out I start making up statistics to make my point. The statistics might even contradict each other, but this is a work of fiction: the point is the point.
For this anthology to exist, out of 10000000000 writers on this site, I’d need about 1000 to read this. That already disqualifies the project, but let’s assume they do.
Out of 1M words that get written for this project, we end up with 50k worth reading. This sounds wasteful, but it makes sense: we don’t know who’s writing what or why. 50k is miraculous. This is how we get it.
500 like this answer/post. 100 send me something. Pretty much all of them think I’m joking about them having to write even more than one story. I accept this not only because I have to, but because developing the abilities of writers as a result of this project is just a nice effect it could possible have, but it’s not the goal. It’s a numbers game. I reckon 10/100 stories are good: I either get these from ten authors who’ve written ten stories or from a hundred authors who wrote just one each. What do I care? Despite how much writers complain about rejection, they do the bulk of the work themselves.
Of 100 authors, 50 send me something great. 10 send me something transcendent.
I encourage the 50 who were shortlisted. I’m sure I would love to sit and provide them detailed edits, find gentle, personalised ways to tell them to keep going, but who has the time? I’ll send them what I come up with. I don’t have to.
70 of the ones who didn’t get accepted send me bitter, angry retorts. But I’m a writer: it’ll take more than that to sully the experience. I can’t let it have me sitting around writing stories about narcissistic idiots just because they’re the majority. (Anymore!) Characters should be original, special, interesting. I’ll give these people no further attention. They don’t deserve it.
3 of the ones who didn’t get in thank me for my time and say they’ll read and promote what we end up making. I encouraged 50 in the hopes of catching these 3 writers in my encouragement net. These are writers who were almost there and will make it next time. Or the time after. Or the time after that. Or the time after that. Providing the next rounds of rejections don’t break them. They might.
I send edits to the remaining 10. If these anthologies take off, I’ll have the right to be a bit more strict about what I accept, and won’t accept anything that even needs editing. A few fight me on the edits. Sometimes that’s what writers do, sometimes it isn’t. We must have convictions without being dickheads.
I make us a book. We get disheartened because it takes six months longer than we expected, but it gets done eventually. Writers are patient.
Of the 10 who sent stories, 7 get as far as telling their friends and family, though I begged all of them to do it. Why am I the one doing the begging? This is as much their opportunity as it is mine. Whatever: I accept it. Someone has to do it. At least if it’s me, I know it’ll get done.
The 3 others, despite me having informed them of the competition they eliminated, are too shy, don’t want to bother anyone—and they won’t. 5 of them thank me for my hard work. 4 get actively involved in marketing.
Would I have a story in this book? Interesting question. If I decided “yes”, I would write and write until I had a story whose quality I felt was undeniable and then send it to those other writers to see if they agreed. I think the point is, if I decided “yes”, I would do anything to make it happen; if I decided “no”, I would do something else.
3 of us go on a tour. We are The Acorn. Who’s to say this doesn’t turn out to create a wonderful book anyway? Still doesn’t mean it will sell, necessarily. We just have to decide whether or not that was really the goal. If it doesn’t sell. It might! You might say that’s what makes it exciting. I say, you might as well see it that way, because either way, that’s how it is. A writer would choose to see it as exciting, just as a committed partner might choose to stay with their loved one, year after year, after the initial spark of ignition has faded and now she must decide, year after year, if it’s worth continuing to stoke the engine. Half of all marriages fail? I would’ve thought 90%. But that’s no slight on marriage. If anything it’s a testament to the robustness of marriage, because whether or not you’re intelligent, you can make it work—sometimes.

If we get frustrated, we just need to remember our pretty cool origin story. G asked R for a writing idea. What they did next will shock you.

Assuming 1000 people who are prone to calling themselves writers read this:
You think I’m not serious? PM me for an email address to which you will send your acorn stories. This single step of active participation has eliminated 90% of the writers. (Writers aren’t lazy, don’t make excuses, but most of the ones who call themselves “writers” do, are.) Those of you who get in touch, you have one year’s worth of weeks to write a great acorn story.
You won’t. You might not participate because you don’t know who I am: fair enough. You might succeed elsewhere, but if you haven’t participated because all of this sounds like too much hard work, I doubt it. If you are inclined to retorting bitterly and angrily to rejection—either through an email you actually send to an editor, or one you just write in your head—it’s either out of confusion, because you don’t know about the above process (if so, I hope this helped—keep at it, mate! Be one of the 3 this encouragement reaches!); or you do know about it, and you know you’re the one holding yourself back. I thought you were passionate about this. So did you.
Don’t get in touch just to tell me this was useful. That’s why I wrote it. Go write something else. In so doing, help me to survive with very little indication that I’m making a difference, let alone a positive one. Writers need this training. Also, I stopped caring what people thought about me long ago. I think that’s dangerous and exciting. Stating it outright might make me sound unlikeable. It might quality as “telling.” But you’re a writer in my flock: we respect one another. You assume I was aware of these writing principles a priori and decided to go against them; you realise it would be inappropriate to point them out.

I’m away to write something else. Excuse me. After that, I’m gonna play Zelda: Breath of the Wild, until my eyeballs melt, as is my wont, after the work is done.

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