How did Robbe-Grillet write his highly original masterpiece, La Jalousie?
Here are my suppositions.
First, Robbe-Grillet noticed that jalousie in French means both jealousy and a type of window blind with horizontal slats.
Or perhaps he began by writing a description of paint peeling on a balustrade.
Then he rewrote this description.
And rewrote it again.
Then he reviewed what he had written, and saw that all three descriptions were interesting. He realized he could write ten such descriptions, plus ten descriptions each of a shadow of a pillar, of a centipede squashed on a wall, of banana trees on a plantation . . . plus six variations of the same dialogue.
Then he patterned the elements of these sets into the strict structure of a whodunit—leaving a sequence of clues.
My conclusion: original results are obtained from original procedures.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who loves yet another woman he never knew. Find your copy at Amazon. Hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions available.
https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Two-Words-Orlando-Bartro-ebook/dp/B072MNB4F9