Writer's block can hit you for a number of reasons, and I'm not going to sit here and adjudicate your fitness to be a writer by saying that you're blocked because you're terrible. Writer's block can hit because you've got the flu, or because it's the middle of tax season and you're more preoccupied with your 1099's than your plot lines.
I have the gift of rhyme - some of the time.
Writer's block presents tough questions to the writer - are you working with old stale material? Are you forcing it? Should you be looking at this project from a different angle? Just asking these sort of questions can sink a project, but failing to ask them might mean that you turn out unreadable schlock.
You've only got two options when writer's block hits:
1) Writer's block hits, and you soldier on and write regardless.
On the plus side, when you've finished with this display of persistence, you can sign off on a good day's work. This works really well if you've got an endurance-sport sort of mindset, and if your writing method always calls you to write one more word, one more page, one more chapter before stopping. If you're the persistent type, play to your persistence and keep on writing. Yes, it is possible to write when you can't write, as I'll explain in a moment.
As a minus, by the time you feel blocked you're already at the limits of your endurance. You may have to go and write something else - I've mentioned this sort of circumlocutory fix before (a sort of misdirection - if you're working on a novel about Southern Dandies, write a few paragraphs about Northern Yankees and then try coming back around), but more as a jump start than a fix. Now, you need to put your ability to write for long stretches to good use. If it would only take you 3 hours to write what you think you have to say, it will now take you 5 , but you'll have it said by the time you're done.
Unstoppable - but also prone to drinking binges.
2) Writer's block hits, and you say fuck it and slam a fifth of cheap gin.
This is a bit of advice from the "if it don't fit, don't force it" school. Admittedly, it sounds more fun than sitting at your computer staring at a blank word doc, but the dangers of blowing off and not writing are pretty serious.
Arguably, if you're 100% sure the piece isn't going anywhere, then you can knock off for the day with no harm done. This is especially true if you've got a few pages down but can't force any more out. That doesn't even sound so much like writer's block as just good old fashioned fatigue, which goes away with a spot of rest. Taking some time off can be refreshing - you relax, you stop fretting, you stop forcing, and sometimes the ideas just come, which is great.
Then again, sometimes they don't. Sometimes a writer doesn't just give up on a day's work, but on an entire project, and ultimately anything resembling a writing career. It's so easy to turn one day off into two, two into a week, and so on, that taking the afternoon off only works for writers with an ADD style - "bender" style writers who knock out ten or more pages in a sit and then recoup for a few days anyway. That's a tricky writing style in the first place, and if that's the way you write I have to put in a good word for discipline, but you're also just the type of writer who can blow off for a few days, sit back down, and pick it up like nothing happened.
Early reviews of your work were less than encouraging
Of the two approaches, I really do think the first is best in that Puritanical Protestant work ethic sort of way. The idea of taking a break and coming back always sounds really good, but you've got to know your limits before you try it. If you don't have the essential discipline to return to the task at hand, then stay at your desk and keep pounding something out. Remember: the stuff you're writing to get over the block doesn't have to be Shakespeare, it just has to be words on a page. Type it up, set it aside, and then get back to the task at hand. Alternately, keep slogging word-by-word through the project you're trying to finish since in the end, that's the only way it will get done: one word at a time, your writer's block be damned.
The trick really is to approach the writing from a different angle, either from a place of rest and rejuvenation, or by making a flank-attack by getting your hands, eyes, and brain going through the motions of writing by writing something else, then coming back to what you ought to be working on, which is the piece you want to write, which is the focus of your writer's block, which you now know how to get around.
I couldn't follow that last bit either
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