Writer's Block remedies!

honestly, i find that doing something physical can help get rid of writers block.
Go for a jog or a walk take the dog if you have one. Is there a local ice rink that has an open skate or a tennis court or a playground with swings? Perhaps you belong to a gym. Do you have a wii? any game that gets you moving a bit helps sometimes i find. Or even just do ten jumping jacks. Put on some wacky music and dance around with the doors and window shut and be as silly as you can.
Physical activity gets blood pumping to your brain again and can wake you up a bit which helps get, as they say, the creative juices going.

I also find that warm showers help relax me enough to the point where I can write again. Or cooking something fun like brownies.

Sitting still rarely helps me at all, I have to do something different for 10-15 min and I typically either have the determination to just right something, even it it doesn't work that well, or have had an idea that fits perfectly and gets me past the tricky part in good form.

Things that do NOT work for me are watching TV, surfing the internet or doing anything that will occupy me for more then 15 min. Setting a timer sometimes helps me keep the focus on the writing rather then on the activity.

When the worst comes to worst and nothing is working, I just sit, turn off the wireless and say that I won't eat, drink, or move till I write at least two hundred words. But you need a very high level of determination for that one.

NaNo 2007: A New Kind of Power (around 30000)
NaNo 2008: Hell's the Pits (25000)
NaNo 2009: Cadence

I think physically turning off the wireless switch on my laptop helps a lot. I also try just bringing my laptop (with the switch turned off) to somewhere new -- the lounge in my building, the library...Anywhere that I don't have a lot of stuff around to occupy my time. Sometimes I just have to get out of my room because it's full of distractions: from the puzzle I'm working on, to my roommate's PS2.

When our school server was down and I couldn't get wireless anyway I made monumental progress. So I think just forcing yourself to not have any other options than to write is a big help.

NaNo '06: The Outside (Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi | 51,228/50,000)
Screnzy '07: [Untitled] (20,339/20,000)
NaNo '07: Coffee Breaks (Mystery/Suspense | 52,376/50,000)
Nano '08: Prequel to '06 (Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi | 10,023/50,000)

I find that by having sketched out--even just a sentence or two, what I want to write next, is a good way of being able to write whenever I sit down. Like, before I leave, I write "X and Y talk about Z". Or "XX holds Z's hand and says something meaningful."
I'm a big believer in letting my subconscious do some of the work--so I give it material to think about by having some clue what my next bit is whenever I quit writing.

Oh, and I think taking walks, biking, moving around is good.
(TV, surfing, and other electronic diversions are not good--even, sob, Bomberman (my video vice for the last 6 months))

Katherine

Crawling. Don't look at me like that, I'm serious. Any activity that requires crossing the midline of your brain to complete the function helps to stimulate your thought process. Draw gigantic figure eights in front of you, making sure you cross the center of your body. March in place, bringing your knees up as high as you can, touching the opposite hand to your knee at the same time. Works well before exams too.

To avoid writer's block, I try to stop each session in the middle of a sentence or paragraph. That way I know exactly where I'm going the next time I sit down.

Oh, and dark chocolate.

Dark chocolate works wonders, yeah. I also find listening to classical music for a half-hour or so before writing helps with inspiration too.

But I found the best way to avoid writer's block is DON'T STOP. No breaks at all until you meet your goal for the day, whatever it is. If there's something more important of course you do that but you can't allow yourself to become complacent or distracted or question your plot or characters or whatever. You make do with what you have, and you plug away. You can't allow yourself to stop until you meet your goal. I find the internal editor can cause writer's block just as well as anything else in NaNo.

When I am stuck, I just think of some crazy, random idea. I start working around that, and it actually ends up making sense.

Have something exciting happen to a non-POV character and figure out how a POV character can logically have seen this, or participated.

I have 3 POV chars. There's a sub-plot going on with two chars who aren't POV. Means that they have to hang out with a POV char, which makes for setting and background naturally (they've had coffee with a POV char twice at a nice coffee shop, lunch with another POV char, etc.) It's not that I picked the wrong POV characters. I'm doing this deliberately.

Katherine

To springboard off Katherine's advice (and it looks like we can all heed her advice - no evidence of writer's block there!) I think it helps to have more than one point of view.

I have two POV characters and anytime I get stuck with one, I switch to the other. For a while I was really unbalanced and only writing one of them, but then I came up with a great idea and the other storyline took off as well.

And ditto on the dark chocolate advice too. Writer's block is only one of a multitude of problems it solves!!

Do not:
1. Stop writing completely
2. Surf the Internet or start researching unless you set yourself a time limit! (This is how I learn property values in Edinburgh...)
3. Watch TV through a full program
4. Wander off without a firm commitment to come back to your story

Do:
1. Keep a journal for ideas and notes. I also love StoryRight.com that was linked as a writing resource on the Naperwrimo wiki for this.
2. Ask someone else for ideas. Use this forum, your writing buddies.
3. Start writing another scene in your book. It doesn't have to be chronological. It may take you places.
4. Have your characters in an argument. Sometimes it helps!
5. I am lame, but the thesaurus sometimes help. Find one word that totally sums up what you wanted.
6. Jot ideas down while reading the newspaper, listening to NPR, scanning Google/BBC/whatever. Some great ideas come from everyday events around you.
7. Listen to music. Classical in particular is known to improve productivity or help with focus.
8. Change your surroundings.
9. Get out of the house and write elsewhere. A coffeeshop is popular for a reason. :) Try anywhere that might suit your characters/story, like the lakefront, a park, mall (if you can concentrate).
10. Take the dog/kid/friend for a walk. A change of scenery might unblock you.
11. Talk it out. Verbalizing may work well for you.
12. Draw it out. Do you need to see where you go?
13. Do a quick workout. Not only is it healthy, you stimulate other parts of your brain.