I don't know your situation, but the only thing that helped with mine was time and perseverance (mostly time to let everything I learned sink in).
.
At this point, I feel time is about the only option for me. I do read a lot, and I do help to critique other's work, though not necessarily on this forum. These are things I've been doing for ages, and yet nothing productive has come from it. In fact, the only thing that reading novels and helping beta/edit has done is make the block and my frustration even worse, which is disheartening because apparently it helps a lot of other people.
I think I know how you feel, so I guess I should start by pointing you to my thread on the self-sabotage monster. (
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280785)
Some things I've tried, with varying success:
1. Short stories. I've discovered that I have absolutely no idea how to write them and that making the attempt triggers the 'block' much faster than anything else, but I like them for that reason. Decreasing the length of the cycle means it takes that much less time to figure out if something works or not.
Yup! I did short stories a while ago when I was in deep and it helped for maybe a month or so, but I fell back into the block and haven't been able to churn out anything more than an idea.
2. An exercise called 'daily plot bunnies'. The idea of it is to come up with a new story idea every day for a number of days - in my case, I've done it over 20 day and 14 days. Most of mine were utter crap, but towards the end I found a couple I'd like to pursue. Yes, that really is a small handful of ideas I don't hate out of 34.
This is something I started doing when I first experienced the block. I've had very limited success with this as of late, like...within the last half year. It's
really taken a turn for the worse.
3. Rewriting with a specific aim in mind. I had this 4-book series where books 1 and 3 were in first person, so I 'translated' the other two to make a complete set. It wasn't easy, but most of the time it was something I could completely ignore unless I had the urge to write. Then it used just enough energy to satisfy me, but not so much I'd run into the block
Tried this, too. I feel like I'm going in circles, though. I know what I want to pursue when I rewrite, omit, add, etc. But I always end up frustrated and then the nothingness returns.
4. Worldbuilding, in the sense of writing descriptions and wild speculation for a place you've written about. I usually use this as a sort of 'freewriting' exercise, so it's weird stream of consciousness stuff that might start with trees and end up with some kind of weird set of rules about shaking hands.
It was weird, but I managed to do this for a science fiction story idea I had in mind. I created this plot, a world, characters and some of their background. I even talked to some friends about it, and we moved things around, got into discussions to find reasoning behind what was going on in the story, so on and so forth. When it came time to the part where I would start writing, I drew a blank every single time, even if I wasn't planning on turning it into a story.
5. Phase outlining, which to me is sort of like writing out the absolute bare bones of a story with no worries about style or voice or making it read like a real book because, hey, it's just an outline. Those things aren't important. Unfortunately, phase outlining has a tendency to feel like I'm bouncing off a massive rubber wall - I can run up to a certain point as many times as I like, but figuring out what happens beyond a certain point seems to be impossible.
You know, even if it's a bare bones outline of a story, I still manage to bite off my head. I can always find something, big or small, to criticize, and then it spins into this immensely frustrating struggle between what my heart really wants and what my brain has convinced itself is terrible, won't work, doesn't make sense, doesn't
sound right, yadda yadda, so on and so forth.
Short version: Find things you can do that satisfy the creative urge but carry little or no risk of triggering the 'blocked' feeling. Maybe you can fill out character sheets or rewrite song lyrics or something. Trying to force yourself to do things you know trigger the block is just going to push you further into the darkness.
No idea if any of this will help you. I think it's slowly lowering the walls of my personal Pit of Suck, but I still have a long way to go before I have a chance of climbing back out.
I hate to pick apart the suggestions, but I have tried every single one of them and not one has given me any measurable success. It's why I think what L.Y. said about just giving it time is my only option at this point. And, of course, doing whatever feels right, even if I can't produce anything I can consider a tolerable read.