Writer's block is a vague, all-inclusive term. A blocked writer needs to determine exactly what is stopping him or her from writing. For fiction writers, the trouble may be that you simply haven't figured out what's going to happen next. Or maybe you realize you've gone down the wrong narrative road and you don't know how to get back on the right path. When that happens to me, I take long walks and think about the book. For some reason, good ideas come to me more frequently when I'm walking.

Here are my writing prompts, the things I say to myself when I need to get back to work:

"Just write the next sentence!"

and

"If it's bad, you can always change it later!"

The best piece of advice I got as a young writer was "Don't give up." The source was my wife.