While everybody finds different ways to produce meaningful pieces of writing, I find that there is a fairly common and time-tested method that works consistently.
1. Find a writing medium. A word processing program is an excellent choice. If you don't have a computer, you're probably too poor to waste your time being a writer.
2. Gather thoughts about a subject or event you find intriguing, like when your best friend stole your woman or the car that drove by your house full of screaming drunken frat boys and killed the neighbors cat. Broad subjects like cultural relativity or meaning should be avoided, as somebody has already written about them better than you could.
3. Discard stupid thoughts. This is a step that many aspiring writers have trouble with, and may take days/years.
4. Type out a basic story outline. An example might look like: Boy is killed by car-> Drunken father hunts down man responsible -> Finds out hot prostitute killed boy -> Tries to kill her, but falls in love -> [At this point, up to ten consecutive pages will be devoted to describing various acts of love-making] -> Prostitute bears man a child -> Child is killed -> Lather, rinse, repeat.
5. Start writing your story. It doesn't matter at which point you start writing, you can just go back and write the rest. You are going to go back and write it, right? Right...?
6. Completely procrastinate of going back to fill in beginning of story.
7. Forget major plot points/character details/spellings of common words.
8. Drink heavily. What, you haven't seen the statistics regarding career writers and cirrhosis incidence?
9. Destroy computer in a fit of drunken rage, move to backup medium. Golf pencils and paper bags are a popular choice at this stage.
10. Repeat step 8. Be sure to bury your face in your hands so that you don't drip snot and tears on your paper bags, you sissy.
11. Turn 40. You've just met the first qualification for having any commercial success as a writer.
12. Establish a presence online. Start up an account on Fictionpress to test-drive your target audience. Languish as traffic trickles in and your pieces get lost amid hundreds of fan-fictions written by twelve-year-olds with little knowledge of how a thesaurus works.
13. Repeat steps 8 and 10. You may be noticing a pattern here.
14. Get an interview with a successful literary agent. Try not to cry when he laughs you out of his office; they feed off of human misery.
15. Get an interview with a less-successful literary agent. You'll know he's the one for you when he says he's willing to "settle for less."
16. Watch as the individuality of your book gets stripped off to its vanilla core to satisfy mass-market demands. Don't worry; you can always release the removed parts onto the forum of some website hidden in the darkest corners of the internet. Or onto Fictionpress. Flip a coin.
At this point you'll encounter one of two paths:
A: Achieve marketability. Book sales are happening. Publisher asks for another. Start the whole process over again and try to ignore the world calling you a hack as your soul melts into the void.
Or...
B. Book fails, publisher tells you to bugger off and sells the remaining stock at a fraction of the price. Start the whole process over again and try to ignore the world telling you that you suck (even though there is a strong possibility that you do) as your soul melts into the void.
17. Repeat steps 8, 10, and 13. You may be running out of booze at this point. If I were you, I'd get some more.
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