The Writer''s Technique in Thirteen Theses--Walter Benjamin

--- Walter Benjamin: Seleted Writings1. eds., Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA:Belknap P of Havard UP, 1999),458-59.

1. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, 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 isin progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo.If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the enda motor for completion.

3. In your working conditions, avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a backgroundof insipid sounds, is degrading. Onthe other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpenstheinner ear,the former acts as touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

4. Avoid haphazard writingmaterials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

5. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

6. Keep yourpen 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. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

7. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honor requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a meal time, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

8. Fill the lacunae in your inspiration by tidly copying out what you have already written. Intuition will awaken the process.

9. Nulla dies sine linea ( Not a day without a line) ㅡbutthere 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. Youwould not find the necessary courage there.

12. Stages of composition: ideaㅡstyleㅡwriting. The value of the fair copy is that in producing ityou confine attention tocalligraphy. The idea kills inspiration; style fetters idea; writing pay off style.

13. The work is the death mask of its conception.