Out of curiosity, since you said you don't read long fic, do you read novels? And if so, is it a different reading process? Because mine is, I can read pretty much any book for ten minutes at a time and pause, no problem, but I need to plan time for longer fics because I just can't put them down (if they're good, but otherwise I just don't finish). I just go, "oh interesting premise, 50k words, guess I won't look at it until weekend".
I can’t read novels, either, because once I start reading fiction, one of two things happens. Either: I get completely engrossed and can’t put it down until it’s done, OR: I lose interest somewhere in the first page or two and stop completely. The former is completely disruptive to my life -- especially since with those fics/novels, I often immediately re-read my favorite parts, which add another couple of hours. And the latter is just... frustrating. Like, sometimes I *know* from trusted sources that it’s a good novel/fic, or that I’d enjoy it if I were in a different mood, but once I set something down, it’s extremely hard for me to pick it up again. (Which is why it took me about 6 months to finally give The Dud another shot, and that was a merely 7k)
Basically I have to be tricked into reading longfics/novels. For novels, I can trick myself into reading them if I’m on a day+ train ride. For longfics, the trick is to feed me little snippets and parts with clearly telegraphed intentions. I think one thing that got me through Ain’t No Grave was that there were nice little summaries/teasers/warnings at the top of each chapter that was like “in this one there’s mentions of past trauma, a fair bit of violence, the kids acting stupid, and oh, Huang Ayi shows up.” And I’m like “ah yes, this is what I want for the next hour.” Similarly, what I like about meme prompt fills is that the prompt kind of tells you where the fic is going, and they always update in snippets, so I might accidentally consume 30k words just by accident.
