How come I write things I hate to read, and I can't write things I love to read?

Maybe you love to read those things because they are not something your brain can fabricate on its own, which would make sense of hating self-help books because you must have plenty of it being fabricated on your own.

Its like when french people come to america and when they go out to eat they get pancakes and burgers, which for us is just normal food, but to them its glorious and fun.

Well, I can relate. I write for a living, but would like to write fiction. Learning how and being OK with what I write has been a slow process.

Also, I am, like you, a perfectionist and harsh critic of myself. (Possibly to a lesser degree.)

I would say to you that the writer is perhaps not the best judge of what others would like to read. Self-help books are huge sellers. You have a fresh and interesting viewpoint that I think would work very well for either self-help or certainly for personal history.

Finally, I think I have even read some of your science fiction. ;) I found the range of your imagination and the real sense of place you created quite vivid and interesting. I, for one, would love to read more.

Have you ever really tried writing science fiction?

I guess you like to be taken along mysterious, surprising rides to unknown places (science fiction) rather than have someone lead you to a place you know you need to go to anyway along predictable plots (self-help).

Giving someone else advise forces you to think of surprising routes along foreign territory to unexpected endings as well.

Maybe writing advise is closer to reading science fiction than writing your own star wars saga. In both cases you are the one looking at other people and hoping for the best by looking for solutions.

Has become fuzzy, hope you still get my drift :)

And… just try writing SF, I’d love to test read.

You are probably agonising over a standard of craftmanship that meets the criteria you assume a book should live up to… That would be the first of many ego related obstacles to overcome

I used to try to write SF. I was in an SF writers group, even. But not any more. @Marina, if you ever read anything I wrote, it was a couple of decades ago. This does not seem very likely to me. Although, since it looks like you did live where I live, it is within the realm of possibility, but…. the only candidate I can think of is a guy.

I realized, and I don’t think this is perfectionism, that writing SF just isn’t really what calls me. It’s an effort. It doesn’t flow easily. Maybe I’m lazy. SF involves research. Real research. If I write about myself, it’s just narcissim. I can remember what I remember. The research is easy.

If I write advice or answers to questions, it’s also pretty easy. I just draw on my experience, and if necessary, I might do a half hour of internet research. So. Laziness, I guess. But also a predilection. I write what I write. I write what calls me. I don’t seem to be able to control that, and I’m not sure it would be good to try to channel it. In a way, as long as I don’t depend on it, it doesn’t matter.

Then again, laziness does enter into it. Things have to be edited. Things? Writing. I actually started on editing the other day, so who knows, maybe I’ll keep on doing it, but I’ve never done it before. As the cliché goes, there’s always a first time…..

maybe you can start by writing sci-fi that relates to your life. Say you work at a Best Buy, but in the book it is an electronics store at a space station, or it is a retail store in a Mad Max style of world. Or maybe your main character is going to school to have a career in space. Just relate to it first, make it fit to what you know, so it comes more naturally.

Maybe I can help from a different direction.

I love to read what I wrote. just being honest So I am asking myself, why might I like to read my own stuff and somebody else doesn’t like to read his own stuff?

I approach writing as an exercise in encoding the best, most specific meaning into the least words; efficiently clear.

When I go back and reread my own stuff, I am re-examining how well I did that. It is not so much about the content as it is about the qualities of efficiency and clarity of the verbiage, word selection, sentence structure.

I don’t think, “My god, what drivel, who would want to read this?”

I think, “My god. What excellently written drivel.”

I think I’m in exactly the same place as @daloon; loving SF and wanting to write it, but always finding myself giving advice instead. I just assumed I like the sound of my own voice.

Maybe it’s a strange thing. I hardly ever read what I’ve written. Usually it’s because I’ve forgotten what I said. Also, I don’t feel qualified to critique what I write. Maybe if years have passed, but, for whatever reason, I almost never go back to things in the past. It’s as if it were a real, live conversation, where the words are spoken, and they disappear forever, except for what people remember.

Writing it down is a kind of practice. I think it’s about learning to express myself more clearly, but I don’t go back and analyze anything. I’m always moving on to the next thing.

It’s different, of course, when I have to write professionally, although, even there, I’m trying to resist the temptation to obsess over things, and try to make them perfect. It’s good enough, I think. Or not. Does it matter? Not really. If someone comes along later to read it, fine, but for the most part, it’s kind of irrelevant within a few hours after it’s written.

@Daloon
Writing Science Fiction can either require a lot of research, or it can require none at all. One beautiful thing about writing fiction is that you may take the liberty of telling the story from the perspective of a person who doesn’t understand – or care to understand – how the scientific elements in the story work.

From what you say, I gather that you simply have trouble writing from imaginary perspectives. It takes practice. I certainly don’t have it down yet, either.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad that you don’t analyze your writing. You analyze other authors’ writing, don’t you?

Yes, I do analyze the writing of others. But I’m not interested in my own, really. If it works, it works, and if not, not. I’m not going to mess with it to try to make it work. I guess I think I can spend my time more happily going onto the next thing.

My preference is for science fiction that is well researched and convincing. The rest is just fantasy, but even that must have analogues to the real world, or it becomes nonsense. I can write from imaginary perspectives. That’s not the issue. It’s just that somehow, the form doesn’t seem right for whatever it is that I want to say.

Sometimes, too, it seems so complex. I have an idea. Then I need a plot. And characters, and a point of view. Ai! So much! Or maybe I have an idea for a plot, but still no characters or any of the rest. And if I have an idea for a character, they never want to be in a science fiction scenario. Everything always seems to come back to the here and now.

I don’t think I’m unique in this. I’ve heard that other sf writers don’t read sf. They read mysteries, or non-fiction, and what comes out is science fiction. I read science fiction, and what comes out is here and now.

I am not a writer, but if I were to write a SF book, this is how I would proceed. Start with some concept that you want to base your story on. Research the area. Write down what you have learned. Then think about scenarios invovling the concept and how you might explain them to someone else. Write down your thoughts on this. Let the characters arise naturally as part of this process. Once you have the outlines of the roles played by the characters, you can flesh them out.

I’m the same about reading science-fiction/fantasy, but can’t write it. I think, for me anyway, it’s comparing what I write to what I’ve read and it doesn’t seem to be as good so I get discouraged.

People have talents and should use them. You know your talents. Bless the world with them and forget about your weaknesses.