Writers block

[Leanne]

Leanne I'm hoping your very measured response applies in my situation too

Yes it does  It's the most natural thing in the world for a conscientious writer to be filled with self doubt.  It's not comforting, I'm afraid.  Someone once said to me: "feeling like you're not a poet is the one sure sign that you are."  We often start out quite full of ourselves, convinced that everything straight from the heart is the most perfect and uniquely beautiful sentiment ever... and then we find out the truth.  For some, the journey ends there; whether they stop writing or not, they stop growing as writers.  Poetry is a bit of a metaphor for life that way.  

I'm lucky in that so far as poetry goes, I've been reasonably successful.  Every year there are fewer and fewer people telling me I'm crap, but the ones who do -- and give me a reason -- are the ones I'm eternally grateful to, even if at first I might want to smack them in the face with a really large dictionary.  Or a VW.  But I still have days -- sometimes weeks -- where I will curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out because the one thing that I think I'm really good at isn't really all that good at all and when will I stop torturing myself and others like this, it's not fair that nobody wants to read my stuff and I can't write anymore and it hurts so much... and then I see or hear something that I absolutely have to get down on paper, and the whole miserable cycle starts again