How do you get out of a rut?

[David Jacques]

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who experiences a case of writers block every so often.  I'm wondering, how do you personally get over it?

I've been finishing up several projects over the last couple months, orchestrating, re-arranging, adding the last finished touch, and self-publishing.  After all that work, and being in the midst of holiday break from school (not having any assignments/compositions lessons coming up to force me to come up with stuff) I've realized that I haven't written any new material in over a month or so.  I've been playing around with some new ideas, tinkering with some themes here and there, but I just can't seem to make any headway on anything.  I can't seem to develop an idea out further than two or three minutes.

Anyone else ever have this problem, or just writers block in general?  How do you go about getting the ball rolling again?

[Sam Umar]

Just like several others here, when I got blocked I go listen to music that will eventually inspire me (or hopefully lol). Sometimes I just sit on my keyboard and try to write anything. If it doesn't fit with the line I have written before, I will just discard it and write something else. This may last for hours, but most of the times I am eventually pleased with the results that come out. And to recharge the battery, I usually just do something different, like posting in forums like this, checking out my websites, updating my online status, among others.

[Matthew Sear]

I think this may just help me!

I have been stuck in a rut all this week!

Matt

Tyler Hughes said:

Iliterally go in to compositional diarrhea mode and start writing anything that pops into my mind. Literally anything no matter how small it is.

Another thing I do is set very strict guidelines for myself, or seek out competitions that have very strict guidelines. I call it the reality show method, giving yourself restrictions for what ever reason brings out ones most creative side.

 

that is just a few things I do