I finally discovered (some of) mine.

Finally!

It's a relief, really, finally knowing what is causing these some short, others decades-long, writing blocks. Recognizing them, maybe in the future, I can steer clear. Yeah, right. Good luck with that.

The latest of such blocks lasted for three days, when I was stuck in the middle of chapter 30 of What Men Want. I finally pushed through yesterday. I'm not saying I actually like what I wrote (though it made me cry), but at least I wrote something.

And I finally got it.

I don't like writing moping scenes. They're necessary sometimes, either to make the story make sense or to make sense of something that happens in the future (as is the case with What Men Want; I wrote a pivotal scene of chapter 32 just after writing chapter 28 but it didn't really fit with the rest of the story, so I had to write something to make it fit—hence the moping scene).
They might be necessary, but I don't like them. I want my characters to be proactive, to actually get off their buts and do something instead of throwing themselves a pity party, so I'm always stuck when it comes to writing such pity parties.

The second pet-peeve of mine are the action and/or battle scenes. I'm not very good at them and whenever I have to write them, they always sound rehashed (at least to me). Like I've already written a similar scene earlier in the story or in some other fic.
And they always seem too short compared to all the rest, making the resolution come across as too easy and rushed. I hate when that happens in the novels I read, you can imagine how I hate it when I'm the one writing such a let-down.

The third block-inducing "incident" comes when I write myself and my characters into a corner (as it happened in Homecoming and I'm still seeking my way out of the mess).
It's not for lack of ideas, it's the fact there are too many of them. I can always find some other way to get whomever I'm writing about out of the proverbial quagmire, and the problem ends up being having to choose which way to go. And then, rethinking it multiple times.

The final one is my favorite, really. It comes when a mini-arc inside a story is finished, when a mini-story inside the bigger story is told, over and done. It's like a mini-vacation really. "I told this, now I can take a break."
Unfortunately, this "break" lasted for a decade in the case of What Men Want.

And the story isn't "safe" as of yet. I might've overcome the moping scene, but there's still an action scene coming up. And I'm dreading it.