I'd start by first thinking what your new language should do. Is it going to be a domain specific language? Or a general purpose one? If the latter, what is its strength going to be? Is it going to be procedial? functional? OO? Block based? List based? Something else?
Second, make some trade-offs. Do you want to write a simple compiler/interpreter? (That probably means a simple syntax, not many features in your language). Does the compiler have to be run fast? Or do you want to give much power to the user of the language (resulting in a more complex compiler)?
Only then I'd worry about the implementation.
Oh, and my step 0 would be is to ponder about "if I really haven't a fucking clue on how to do that, is my disdain to read a book justified"?