Updated by user suggestion. Element added: tzimtzum.
We can’t really understand how the Ribbono shel olam does anything, and so in contemplating the concept of creation we have to fall back on simplifications, models that capture some aspects of the process that we can understand. Traditionally a number of such models have been used; and in fact, the same authority could appeal to more than one. They do not necessarily contradict, they look at the incomprehensible (by man) at different angles and thus match reality in some ways and oversimplify in others.
I thought I would post a survey of some of these models, and I invite the readership to help round it out with anything I may have missed.
1- Manufacture: From this perspective, Hashem first made yeish mei’ayin (ex nihilo, something from nothing) the materials in a step called beri’ah, and then through yetzirah gave them the forms we know today.
2- Speech. The word used in the Torah is “vayomer — and He said”. The world is spoken. As the Baal Shem Tov points out, this is different than writing. Print is written, and then persists without further involvement by the writer. Spee