Question: You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.

I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.

Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.

Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.

However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.

Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?

I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write!

Answer: 
My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: **just write**.

There's a nice saying -- "*the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum*". I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.

Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( *your writing tools and skill* ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( *Creativity and willpower* ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)

That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. **You will see that as you write, you will write**. And I'm not being redundant here.

**It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not**. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing.
If creative writing is one of your talents and creative ideas are coming to your mind. Don't hesitate to do so. Take a pen and start writing those. For first few days, you will feel uncomfortable but afterwards you will be habituated and things will go smoothly as it was before when you used to write.

Thanks..