Read the best writers: maybe it would help to set a goal of one classic per year at least. Classics have stood the test of time, as we say. Keep trying them, if you don’t like them at first—come back to them. I tried Joyce’s Ulysses three times before I read it all the way through. (It helped that I was living in Ireland at the time, where I saw Joycean and Beckettian characters all around me.) I haven’t yet read Don Quixote, but I think I’ll actually enjoy it.

LYDIA DAVIS