From brain pickings—The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses, with this introduction:

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open,” Stephen King advised. “Do back exercises,”Margaret Atwood suggested. “Know everything about adjectives and punctuation, have moral intelligence,” Susan Sontag counseled. Each accomplished author seems to have a different secret to the craft of writing, but some of the most enduring advice comes from legendary German literary critic, philosopher, and essayists Walter Benjamin. Under a section titled “Post No Bills” in his 1928 treatise One-Way Street, found in his indispensableReflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (public library), Benjamin offers thirteen essentials of the writer’s technique, touching on familiar themes like the value of keeping a notebook (Virginia Woolf), the incubation period of ideas (T. S. Eliot), the role of discipline (Henry Miller), and the distinct stages of writing (Malcolm Cowley):