Reading issues

[Tonstad39]

I like to write short stories and novels (Usually fantasy) and i have a literary canundrum that goes as follows: I love writing fiction, yet i don't like to read fiction myself.

I have never been big into reading fiction (even as a kid) and i would always read almanacs among other reference books. I have been interested in other mediums of expression, ergo youtube & drawing, but writing was the one that came easiest to me. Part of the reason why I dislike fiction stems from bad experiences in middle / high school where reading was something you had to do—a chore that i usually never got around to doing.

On some occasion i remember losing myself in some of the class materials, but have always seperated that from fun. I had poor grades in many of my english clases because of it. So what I have two questions:

What's a good way to get into reading fiction without feeling like its a household chore?

How do I move on from such internallized stigmas that I placed on a medium of expression?

 

[Rival]

I write fiction and I read very little fiction. It's fine.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You're not alone. Fiction books make up a very tiny portion of my own personal library (with the Vampire Chronicles, Song of Ice and Fire, Tolkien's Middle Earth stories, and Chuck Palahniuk being the majority of my the fiction I own), but I love writing fiction. While I'd rather read science or history or philosophy, but writing fiction lets my mind by governed by my imagination, opening up entirely new worlds for my mind to build and enjoy.
Have you read much creative non-fiction? (such as Capote's In Cold Blood or Thompson's Hell's Angels) They tend to be mostly true stories, but with some creative leaps and gonzo flair. It's also wicked fun to write because you're writing about things that happened, but have a degree of creative liberty to do what needs to be done to make these things into a good story, like when I wrote a story about a "haunted woods" nearby and combined several trips with several different groups into on story that took the best of what each experience had to offer.

 

[DavidFirth]

I write fiction and I read very little fiction. It's fine.

Yeah, I see your fiction on here all the time.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Yeah, I see your fiction on here all the time.

Ditto your petty potshots.

 

[YmirGF]

I only write non-fiction and rarely read fiction, other than on political blogs, that is.

 

[DavidFirth]

Ditto your petty potshots.

<You gotta love these adolescent attempts to mock>

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I like to write short stories and novels (Usually fantasy) and i have a literary canundrum that goes as follows: I love writing fiction, yet i don't like to read fiction myself.

I have never been big into reading fiction (even as a kid) and i would always read almanacs among other reference books. I have been interested in other mediums of expression, ergo youtube & drawing, but writing was the one that came easiest to me. Part of the reason why I dislike fiction stems from bad experiences in middle / high school where reading was something you had to do—a chore that i usually never got around to doing.

On some occasion i remember losing myself in some of the class materials, but have always seperated that from fun. I had poor grades in many of my english clases because of it. So what I have two questions:

What's a good way to get into reading fiction without feeling like its a household chore?

How do I move on from such internallized stigmas that I placed on a medium of expression?

Like it's been said, if you try and force it it's going to feel like a chore. Its totally fine if it ends up not being your bag and you shouldn't feel bad about it.
But if you really want to try, I night suggest giving audiobooks during a commute or exercise a try. It's not got the mental exercise benefit of reading but it's a more passive way to get some books in. It's the only way my mom could get through the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire books, which are very long and difficult for busy lives.

You can also start with a couple different genres to see if one books. Currently my favorite audiobooks (and some of my favorite books in general) are:
The Graveyard Book, a childlike but dark story of a boy who is raised by a community of ghosts in a cemetery, far away from the dangers of the world.
World War Z, a pseudodocumentary style book collecting the oral accounts of people go have survived a zombie apocalypse (has a ton of great actors in the audiobooks from Nathan Fillion to Mark Hamil to Simon Pegg)
Gone Girl, a mystery suspense where a man's wife goes missing and everyone begins to suspect the husband killed her.

You might also try a non-fiction written in third person character narrative such as Devil in the White City, the true story of a famous serial murderer operating in Chicago during the Chicago world's fair.

Good luck.