Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.
A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.
I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.
The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.
When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.
Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.