A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.
Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.
Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.
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.
Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.
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.