THE PILLOW-BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON— Translated by Arthur Waley—Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). The Tale of Genji, recently done into English, revealed a highly sophisticated civilization in loth ...

1. Carve out some time to write, and then start writing. Now, I bet a lot of you out there have said to yourselves, I'm gonna write my book someday. "And someday tends not to happen in life," says ...