Do you get writer's block? Turns out this malady is so ancient that in 367 BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle developed a rhetorical method to jog the author's brain!
Here's a modern adaptation of Aristotle' concept at Beautiful English Online: http://scribalterror.blogs.com/beautiful_english/2007/05/thinking_of_som.html
(BTW, Beautiful English Online is a new blog of Gail Hapke of Scribal Terror. She is also an author here on Neatorama. You can ask Gail anything about the English language. Actually, I have a Neatorama t-shirt ready for anyone who can stump her)