No Such Thing as Writer's Block

As a writer, one of the most dreaded things that no amount of experience or any creative writing degree can prepare you for is the moment when you have no idea what to write next. Writer's block is a bit like forgetting why you walked into a room, except you can't leave the room and it takes several days to remember what you were doing. It's similar to planning a holiday in Melbourne, only you don't have a car or airplane tickets to get there, no travel snacks, and you think Melbourne is north of Sydney (for anyone unfamiliar with Australian geography, it's not).
    So, how do you get past it?
    The quick answer is that you don't.
    If you jumped onto this page expecting a way to defeat writer's block, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. What you can do, however, is ignore the invading army that is writer's block and go build a chateau until it gets bored and leaves. Once that's over, you'll have no writer's block and a chateau. Good results all around.
    Basically, writer's block prevents you from writing more of your novel. But anyone who has written a book knows that there is always stuff to do after the book's written. So why not just do that stuff now?
    Go put together a post on social media to advertise your writing, both past and future, so that people will know what you're doing.
    Consider what your book's cover art is going to look like. Examine other books to see what elements work well with your genre and your story. Maybe draw up a sketch. If you're your own cover artist, just go and do the cover art.
    Plan out future titles. No, I don't mean write it, I mean put together a structure for the story that you've written down only a vague description for. Maybe come up with future characters. If your characters only have brief, poorly detailed descriptions, expand on them.
    Do some research. Wherever and whenever your story is set, there's always going to be something you can draw from the real world into it. If your book is set in a fantasy land, even just understanding how our world came to be the way it is can provide you with the potential for worldbuilding that will give your story so much greater depth. If it's a crime thriller, then looking at how real world criminal enterprises work can give you a good basis to build your story of dark intrigue on. And science fiction has the word science in it for a reason. How do your characters travel faster than the speed of light? What is the journey they take to understanding how to reanimate a dead body? So much of what we write comes from our imagination, but the reader won't enjoy or believe it if none of it makes sense.
    Employing beta readers is also an important aspect of writing, if it's the kind of thing you want to use. So arrange some readers ahead of time and think about useful questions you can ask to get the best feedback possible.
    If you're a self-publisher, there's always some boring business stuff you can do. Tax forms, distribution networking, marketing campaigns. They're awful, but they have to be done at some point.
    Also, don't leave writing your blurb to the last minute. Work on it early. I can tell you this from personal experience.
    And lastly, if there's nothing else to do ahead of time, go and read a book. It can provide inspiration to help bypass that writer's block, and you can learn how to improve your own writing style by studying that of your favourite authors.
    That being said, there are ways to rid yourself of writer's block. Probably the most effective technique is something akin to journaling. If you know where in the story you were focused yesterday, you can keep up the flow and prevent the story fading like mist in the morning. Each day, write down what you have to do, whether you're focusing on a particular narrative thread or a subplot or you have writing-adjacent things to do. That way, when you start the next day, you can follow on from yesterday. This should - most of the time - keep away that dastardly writer's block.
    Organisation and flexibility can be powerful tools for writers to prevent distractions and avoid delays in your writing journey, keeping you on schedule even when you don't know what to do next. Writer's block can be your friend if you let it.