How Does Dean Koontz Build A Novel?

'I kind of build a novel the way marine polyps build a coral reef; it's millions and millions of little precarious bodies stacked on one another.'
     -Dean Koontz,
     author of more than 100 Books, in an interview with the Rumpus,
     as quoted in the New York Times Book Review, January 31, 2016, pg. 4

This photo of two scientists studying the Great Barrier Reef, one in the process of writing, seemed too good to not include!

Dean's metaphor above sparks the question for each of us working on our own manuscripts:

How do we build a novel?

Or a picture book, or a chapter book, for that matter?

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee