Jaq had a nice post about writing. Here's my comment:

for me, reading is a lot easier b/c it's passive. i'm lazy. it allows me to feel smart and authoritative and sit in judgment over someone else. how's the style? the ideas? i decide.

writing's hard. it so often feels nonproductive. you might not use anything from that hour or two hour or three hour session. the only thing that's less productive than writing is not writing.

writing is active. and it puts my ideas out there for someone else to judge. it will make me subject to all of the same kinds of criticisms i level at other authors, and worse.

a really good book in this writing vein is 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron. it's a twelve week program of 'recovery of creativity'. one of the weeks she prescribes a 'reading fast'. that's when you realize pretty quick how often you read for psychological comfort (which is the same reason i eat, which is one of the things i found out in conventional fasting).