Psyblog recently suggested 7 psychological techniques for breaking through creative blocks. The write up is rather abstract, but one method I liked is substituting generic verbs for specific ones in order to expand your possible solutions.
For instance, I might frame my challenge as: How do I get more people to sign up for my Brainstorm & Focus e-bulletin?
The verb is "sign up." Some more generic verbs might be: pay attention to, be aware of, see.
These suggest that a good strategy is to focus on exposing as many people to it as possible and letting the truly interested ones sign up. The strategies that come to mind are offering free samples of the ebulletin via lots of writing-related sites, offering a column based on the ebulletin to newspapers or magazines, and distributing leaflets about it at writing conferences.
If you feel stuck, give this a try because by enlarging the scope of the verb, you may also enlarge your circle of thinking.
This can work just as well when coming up for some plot solutions--instead of stating your problem, state the character's problem, enlarge the verb, generate alternatives, and use them to give you fresh options for what happens in the story.
(There are 100 specific ways to be more creative in my latest book, "Creativity Now!" published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)
