Whether or not you are a good writer, you can't improve by not-writing.
My self-esteem rapidly shifts between genius-god who is blessing the world with his words, and simpering fool who is wasting his life away.
Ooh! I actually saw a thing about this recently! It's actually good news, it actually means you're improving, it just doesn't feel like improvement because it's happening in phases.
Basically,
reading and writing are two separate skills. (Perhaps "reading" would be better phrased as "criticizing literature," though-- it implies cultivating a discerning eye.) As separate skills, they each improve when you use them-- and this means that they improve at different rates.
When you're better at reading than you are at writing, your own writing looks like crap. When you're better at writing than you are at reading, your own writing looks amazing. Unless you're blessed with skills that increase in lockstep, you'll alternate through phases of each... even though both your reading and your writing skills both keep objectively going up, in the long term. (If you don't believe me, read some of your
really old writing and try to bask in how much you've improved since you wrote that mess, rather than cringing about having written it in the first place.)
So be happy about this transition. Learn to plan for it, and ride it out. When your writing sucks, maybe it's a good time to start a fresh story so you can build it from the ground up using all your new skills, avoiding your past mistakes. When you feel like you're knocking it out of the park, find a new story to read, something you can sink your teeth into, or maybe read some articles about how to write better. In this way, you'll always be leveling up your weakest skill, oscillating between good and bad at a rapid clip.
(Unless your doctor tells you you're bipolar, in which case, take your meds and try to find balance. But if you're not bipolar, this isn't unhealthy, it's just how learning to read and write work.)
Also, here's one bonus tip: I often find I'm better at writing first thing in the morning, when I'm well-rested. If your lifestyle allows you to think for 10 or 20 minutes lying there in bed before you wake up, give it a try. You may just find that all the tangled plot elements that perplexed you the night before suddenly magically have an obvious and intuitive solution, simply because your brain is well-rested and you're still in that floaty dream-adjacent state where ideas come naturally.
