Writer's block need be no more than a moment of hesitation with these ten, great get out of jail card ideas.

1) Prevention

Prevent getting blocked in the first place by giving your brain a fair chance to perform.

Know your best writing time and work with it.

Feed the brain - drink plenty of water, eat fruit, practice office circuit training by which I mean rather than spending hours hunched over the PC, get up every 15 minutes and do a few exercises.

2) Reverse the psychology

Ban yourself from writing. Rather than say, 'I can't write', say, 'I'm not allowed to write for a day.' You'll find that soon you'll be begging yourself to be allowed back to the computer.

3) Take a time out

Are you feeling withdrawal symptoms just at the thought of that? If it's too scary, just take a timeout - 15 - 30 minutes should do the trick.

4) Walk and talk

Many people do their best thinking on the move. Harness this kinaesthetic energy with a quick, brisk walk. Let your footsteps talk to you and recapture your inner rhythm.

5) Multiple projects

Have many different writing projects on the go at the same time. If you reach an impasse with one, another may be more productive particularly if you produce a range of factual and fictional material.

6) Different writing tasks

Writing involves a number of skills and activities such as researching, planning, structuring, embellishing, editing, reworking and proof reading, so there should never be a time when you are stuck for something to do. The purely creative part is only a proportion of the overall job.

The prolific crime writer George Simenon wrote on average, a book every three weeks! He did this by sketching out the story board, then writing the story in simple terms and finally adding the more colourful language elements. Perhaps a common blockage occurs when we run out of creativity and we don't know where a story is going either. This way, you separate the structural and creative elements.

7) Write in reverse

Start with an ending and work out how to get there. In this way, you not imagining or creating what happened next but logically constructing how such a situation arose. The BBC cult comedy series One Foot in the Grave was written in this way.

8) Use randomness

Use a dictionary and select words randomly to include in the text. This will take you somewhere you wouldn't have thought of.

9) Switch the sense

Writing can utilise all of the senses but often we get stuck using

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