Writing is a bit like golf in that changing your swing can lead to a long period of confusion and generally poor performance.
It is a standing joke that when your regular golf partner begins to beat you regularly, you buy him a video to improve his golf swing.
Then for the next six months you have him beat as he tries to get his old swing back.
Amateur golfers, when they go professional, take the routine of winning with them for a short while.
Then they hit the wall - amateur and pro golf are very different animals.
This is what makes a true career professional, the one that matures and grows as a seasoned pro, or fails as a gifted amateur.
So it is too with writers.
You become rusty rather quickly if you spend your days copy-editing and not writing.
You lose your competitive, your unique edge, the thing that makes you special.
Once you have not written for yourself for some time, you experience the yips just as professional athletes do.
It is simply performance anxiety - can I do it? Do I still have it? And you are terrified the answer is no.
As sports professionals must practice, so must writers.
Only by writing - as much as it takes - will you overcome creative yips.
Show yourself you can do it by working through the agonies of anxiety.
In the end anxiety fades and you learn not to fear the yips - fearing fear itself.
Strive at all times to have a project on the go - whether you steam ahead with it or not.
Just have it there for you to visit every so often.
Recognize that you will feel anxious regarding performance - you should! It can work for you positively, rather than approaching a project smugly and without any passion or true creative energy.
Feel the adrenaline flow - get the rush.
A good way of keeping the edge in a non-creative environment is to pay more creative attention to your e-mailing every day.
Check, rewrite, make them a work of passion and skill.
Make them worth reading - your readers will love you for it because they will look forward to receiving them - a spark of brightness in their day.