1- Deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.
2- Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress.
3- In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity.
4- Avoid haphazard writing materials.
5- Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
6- Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.
7- Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
8- Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.
9- Nulla dies sine linea [‘No day without a line’] — but there may well be weeks.
10- Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.
11- Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
12- Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.
13- The work is the death mask of its conception.
