How to Write a Great Novel

The WSJ reveals the methods of a clutch of novelists. My favourite, Nicholson Baker’s method approach:

For his recent novel “The Anthologist,” a first-person narrative by a frustrated poet who’s struggling to write the introduction to a new anthology, he grew out a beard to resemble his character, put on a floppy brown hat, set up a video camera on a tripod and videotaped himself giving poetry lectures.