I know it's meant well, and I agree with the spirit, but here's the problem.
>If it works, put it in your literary toolbox.
How is the newbie writer to know what works and what doesn't? Indeed, even the writer who has written multiple books faces this. For example, I have five completed novels that I've published. But this current one is a fantasy mystery, and the forms and conventions of mystery are new to me. Not as a reader--I've read plenty--but certainly as a writer. Did I hide the clues well? Do the reveals work? Does the payoff work?
All I can do is exactly what the newbie has to do: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. No advice, no structures, it's all just plow ahead and fix it in the editing room. One hopes. It's a bit like other art forms. The musician can study and rehearse, but once on stage it's a different world and you don't know until you do it. At least the musician gets live feedback (which can be good or bad). The painter can study technique and make sketches, but until the painting is hung and viewed by the public, all advice is sort of irrelevant.
Now, for the more experienced writer, who has written books in a particular way and now undertakes to do another along the same lines, the advice about toolboxes is spot on. We get to where we have a feel for what might work for us and what won't. We even get a notion about how well and how much it helped once the project is completed. I'm all about the toolbox now. When I was on my first novel, I couldn't tell Shinola from that other stuff; I was just trying to keep from drowning.