Some of us can, some of us cannot. When it comes to writing - either stories, lyrics, etc. - I'm one of those who cannot. I've always been a supporting role type. I was a musical director for bands, eventually ending up in the Apollo Theatre, Carnagie Hall and similar venues as well as doing arranging and recording sessions. When I retired from touring I became a music recording engineer and now do sound design. The preamble is just to give you context. I am not an original creator, but I have worked with dozens of extremely talented people and watched them go through creative constipation. My job in my various support roles was to help them when that occurred.
While touring you spend many hours is trains, planes and automobiles (sorry, I couldn't resist
) and many more waiting to get on stage. If you don't party there isn't much else to do but read. I read lots of the "looking for inspiration" type books and dozens of novels in addition to all of the tech stuff. The advice most often given is to get out of the rut. Make radical changes; as a musical director it was changing keys, tempos and/or arrangements. In the studio it was change the approach; the things I did as a musical director and sometimes do really strange, stupid or comical things - like using pitch change to turn the singer into a Muchkin or Darth Vader, having them lay on the floor to sing, putting weird effects on an instrument, taking the hi-hat away from the drummer, removing a string from a guitar... You get the idea.
As a reader one of my favorites is Orson Scott Card. In one of his short story books one of his writers block exercises was included. He would pick dozens of random names from the phone book, write a brief life history of each, and then pull a few from the pile and try to figure out how they would interact.
As a sound designer I spend quite a bit of time listening. I'll sit in the train station, a diner, on a park bench and lots of other places and listen to people talk. It's an exercise to improve my dialog editing. In those and other places I listen to footsteps, cars passing, construction sites, wind in the trees, waves on the beach, kids on a playground or in school, sporting events, factories, malls, etc. as an exercise for Foley, sound FX and ambience editing and mixing.
As strange as it may sound I even got some inspiration from my dad - a dark suit, white shirt, button-down-collar guy who worked for IBM in various financial divisions for 35 years. When they were brainstorming they were encouraged to consider options that were way out in left field including immoral, unethical and illegal solutions. They most definitely did not implement any of those ideas, but concept was the same; get out of the safe and familiar and look for inspiration in unlikely places
A trap that I and many other creative people fall into is the "forest for the trees" syndrome (that's why I like it when others mix my work while I fly second chair). You get too close to your work and have a hard time being objective. You have to pull away for a while and come back with a fresh perspective. So you may want to try a few of my exercises; go out and eavesdrop on conversations, watch people interact in the real world, have your characters do really odd/unrelated things that have no bearing upon your story whatsoever.
So don't take it so seriously; get out there and get crazy, get stupid, get playful, get weird - and have fun!
