THE METHOD
step one
Every Journey begins with a single step. That's how the poem "Footprints In The Sand" was written. But your novel doesn't have to be about walking.
Here's how I begin writing a best-selling novel using the Method. The first step, or footprint, is to come up with a brilliant idea.
Let's use a real-life example. When I decided to write The Fifth House of the Heart, my famous vampire novel, the first thing I did was come up with an idea. Now, many writers will tell you they aren't sure where their ideas come from, or how they know when something is the "right" idea, a concept worth spending thousands of hours procrastinating around. These are lies. If you can't come up with a string of guaranteed best-selling ideas, why even bother?
My own approach is to have a friend tie my hands together behind my back, beat me with a length of garden hose, then pull a plastic bag over my head and duct tape it tightly around my neck. After that, I run out the front door and stagger over to the neighbor's house, claiming I was held hostage for several hours by a couple of men in ski masks who never asked me a thing. They just sat there going through my old taxes and high-fiving each other. Usually my neighbors give me a glass of lemonade and offer to call the police, but I always refuse because "I don't want to compromise my clearance with the Committee".
Then I go home and sit around for days or weeks watching Korean soap operas and eating cashews until I think of something to write.
