Was thinking about T. Berry Brazelton and his "touchpoint" theory--which always seemed very accurate to me. Basically, a kid suddenly regresses and is an absolute pain in the @ss in some area they never had a problem in before (my words, not TBB's). They do this when they're about to have a developmental spurt, about to surge forward in some way, learning to do something new or integrate some new skill. Once they've accomplished the new thing, they're fine again.

Like, say, a one-year-old suddenly starts waking and screaming every night and you have no idea why. Then in regular life he starts walking, and shortly after you realize the night wakings have stopped. It's like his wee little brain couldn't handle the stress of holding everything together all at once: the new stuff he wanted to learn and the old stuff he already knew. But once he got the new stuff going--once he realized walking was no problem--he was cool again. Only you don't see that until you look back and put two and two together. At the time you're just ready to rip your hair out.

I wonder if it's the same for writing. When you're trying to learn something new, do you backslide in old areas as you're integrating the new thing? Will you come out better in the end, with more abilities in your creative tool kit? Or are you screwed for life, and you'll always suck at writing from now on because you fiddled around too much with your comfort zone?