 Then, with a fifth book half-completed, Maillard was afflicted with writer's block.From 1985 through 1988 Maillard applied his writing skills to designing university and adult education courses for the Open Learning Agency and, from 1986–1989, he workshopped his screenplay, "Two Strand River", with Patricia Gruben's Praxis Film Development Workshop (Simon Fraser University).Maillard's fifth novel, "Motet," published in 1989, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.