Is it considered amateur-ish to want to write fictional literature when you've NEVER read an entire book before?

Thank you for your time and your response. I do genuinely appreciate it.

The thing that I didn't mention in the main post that would probably help a bit is that I have Asperger's, and with that I have some serious issues with non-visceral forms of communication. Again, I just have a preference for more stimulating media, because I don't believe I physically am capable of holding focus for anything that doesn't 100% grip my attention, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't focus. I can read TvTropes and your post just fine, but there's something about books that for some reason my mind just can't jump to at all, and believe me, it frustrates me more than you.

And the thing is, is that not to get really personal, but I'm also really, really self-conscious, and not just to the stuff I create, although that doesn't help. Just about everything I do or not do, I'm afraid that there's a lot of people judging me, hating me, and other things like that, and it's really got to me. I like doing the stuff that I do, but I really need validation because I really don't get it from anywhere else, so I'm stuck in a world where I have to please myself but also an audience who might not exist... and that's horrifying to me.

Honestly, you know what's the scariest thing about critique? It's not getting harsh criticism, although if it gets personally antagonistic, that really fucking hurts. No, it's no critique. And this is an issue I have had repeatedly with my films/animations/comics/etc. I get nothing. Not saying I'd prefer knowing everybody hates me, but shouting into a void, creating something that ultimately nobody gives a damn about really terrifies me, and based on experience, it's the only thing I get, and it's what I'm afraid of getting again with literature. Not snobbery, not vitriol, not hostility, but dead fucking silence.

I want to write (not just books, just anything, like web serials) because I want to tell stories based on the 500 pages of notes I've written/rewritten/reformatted over the course of at least 7 years, and the other methods I've come up with have resulting in utter humiliation in that nobody shows up. I'm just anxious to start again with writing, because it's not a form that I completely understand - not by choice, mind you - and I'm afraid that after all this silence, when I'm working in a field that I don't completely understand but am curious to pursue because 1) It's maybe less painful and 2) It's all I have left, that the first thing that will come to mind is:

"Lol, your writing is shit. What are you, some pillock who never learned to read?"

/r/writing Thread Parent