Two thoughts.... About the first rule being learning to see. We did an exercise to describe a living room. And the class all wrote what you'd expect, throwing in everything and the kitchen sink. The teacher was like, "now describe the room from three points of view. The realtor selling the house. The homeowner buying the house. And someone running through the room because the house is on fire."
Second about not knowing how to fix things. I was always amazed when my editor would say a certain section was too slow, invariably the correct fix was to add MORE words. Because the reason it felt slow is that I was summarizing too much, and not letting the reader experience it. Summaries are boring. :-)