3 ideas
King treats a story as something that already exists and has to be found, like a fossil in the ground, and not as something the writer engineers from a plot outline. The writer's job is to put characters in a predicament and then carefully dig out what happens, using the smallest tools possible so the find isn't damaged. Heavy plotting is the jackhammer that breaks the fossil, and the result is stories that feel manufactured and not true.
Write the first draft alone, for yourself, without showing anyone. Then put the manuscript in a drawer for at least six weeks so you can read it as a stranger. Only after that do you revise with the door open, for your Ideal Reader, cutting by the formula 'second draft = first draft minus 10%'.
King argues that the muse arrives only if you show up at the same place and time every day and produce a fixed amount of work. His own quota was about 2,000 words a day. A steady routine trains the mind to enter the creative state on cue, while long gaps let characters go stale and weaken the writer's belief in the story.