Conquering writer's block (one paragraph at a time and with an Arthur Boyd painting as inspiration)

I hit a wall in my revisions the week before last. Hard. Critiques I'd received suggested I needed to rewrite a large part of my manuscript AND completely re-characterize one my MCs. A slight blow, when I was hoping to start querying this month (well, a huge blow actually!).

Anyway, once I got over that and accepted this was what I needed to do, I sat down and opened a new document. But. Try as I might, I couldn't make the words come. I sat and stared at my computer screen, tried plotting the new Part, downloaded Scrivener (and procrastinated while I learnt how to use it), drank too much tea, started wasting my time on YouTube, ate too much chocolate, anything except writing really.

I suspect many of you have been in that situation yourself. Not a nice place to be, especially when you've a deadline breathing down your neck, even if it's only a self-imposed one like mine.

(Painting by Arthur Boyd hanging at Parliament House, Canberra )

I did (mildly) stress for a while, but a couple of days later I got over my writers' block, all because of three things that happened in the same day:

1. I took a break from my writing (a proper full-day break, not just an hour away from the screen);
2. I took my relatives sightseeing in my city and saw a painting I fell in love with (Actually, I decided it would provide the color scheme for my dream house, and I spent a lot of time planning how I could buy a large print of the painting, and use this, this, and this color in the living room, this in the kitchen, etc etc); 
3. I started thinking about my beginning scene of the Part in a new way. 

I'd been stuck on the big-picture issues, you see, and had so many different things running in my head I couldn't find any space just to start writing. Plus I was stressing about how big the task was, how I'd never get it finished, what if it was as "bad" as the first attempt, etc etc.

Finally, after my day of inspiration (that same night, actually!), I managed to shove my negative and stressful thoughts aside and think only about the first sentence and the first paragraph. Where were my main characters? What were they doing? How could I ground my reader in the scene before I even dived into dialogue/action/etc. Those were the questions I asked myself. And I told myself just to sit down and write one paragraph to describe and set up the scene. Just one paragraph.

Before I knew it, my words were flowing again, and I couldn't wait to dive into my re-write. Using Scrivener, which I've fallen in love with as well by the way (I might do a separate post on that one day, to share my thoughts) :D

And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

How about you: Do you get writer's block very often? How do you get yourself out of it? Do you find looking at a scene a different way helps you to write it? What do you think about basing the color-scheme of your house on a painting? :D