How to Beat Writer’s Block – The New Yorker.

The duo proposed a simple intervention: exercises in directed mental imagery. While some of the blocked writers met in groups to discuss their difficulties, Barrios and Singer asked others to participate in a systematic protocol designed to walk them through the production of colorful mental images. These writers would sit in a dim, quiet room and contemplate a series of ten prompts asking them to produce and then describe dream-like creations. They might, for example, “visualize” a piece of music, or a specific setting in nature. Afterward, they would visualize something from their current projects, and then generate a “dreamlike experience” based on that project. The intervention lasted two weeks.

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A “dream diary” seems like a useful way to get through all sorts of mental blocks, no matter what you’re writing about a story in some way, the best you can, and no one is ever going to read it… unless you want them to.