Joan Didion was a fashion writer when she broke ranks to write about the hippie movement in 60s San Francisco, she quickly realised her subjects (and she) had nothing to say.
Triggering an existential crisis, Didion started to become radicalised. Out of this came her magnum opus in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and started the novel writing career we know her for.
Didion put herself out there, she experienced a deep winter in her writing career and without realising it, the cause became the solution. I think there's a lesson in there for us all - everything happens for a reason.
We all suffer confidence crises and disillusionment from time to time; as a writer it's difficult not to - your art is constantly ripped apart by non-writers, feedback is mostly subjective and when you spend hours (maybe even days/weeks/months) agonising over full-stops and vocab, things slip. However, every stumbling block is a development opportunity, even if it doesn't look or feel like it.
That's why writers are perpetually melancholic, evolving and have skin thicker than a rhino's arse.
