1. Pick a guilty pleasure sort of story that you like--buddy cop, vampire romance, couple adopts a wacky misbehaving dog. Write five pages of the most deliberately bad text you possible can. As hackneyed as possible. The story does not have to have a beginning middle or end--the point of it is to be as ridiculous as possible. [This is to untrain you from the idea of "I can't write unless it's good"]
2. What is the last movie/TV show/book/restaurant that you hated so much that every time it comes up your friends cringe away from you a little because you get so heated? Write a really compelling review of this thing, whatever it was. It has to be well-articulated in terms of its analysis. [This is to flex your critical thinking skills without creativity being as central.]
3. Write an approximately 100 word description of the room you are currently sitting in, making sure that you capture not just what it looks like, but its mood as well. Once you're satisfied, cut it down to 50 words while still retaining the same components: a sense of what it looks like as well as a sense of what it feels like. Then cut it to 25 words. [This is an editorial exercise to make you think about conciseness.]
4. Make a list of your top 5 to 10 villains, listing adjectives that describe each. See if there are patterns that emerge. [Gets you thinking about characters, or if there are implicit patterns underlying what appeals to you.]
5. Put the word "Aleppo" into Google image search and then write an essay about first world problems. [This is to put things in perspective. Writer's block is not a disease, it's a choice.]
6. Take a horoscope from three different signs and write a scene where each person is dealing with a situation described in one of the horoscopes. No one can explicitly say what their problem is, however. [This is to get you focused on a scene, not a larger work, and how you can do things indirectly. ]
7. Write a query letter for your book/ story, even if you have no intent of eventually using it. [Query letters are awful to write, but actually make you think about where your book fits in in the market and what the essential nugget about it really is.]
8. Write a synopsis for the thing your working on. It has to follow the rules of a good synopsis: ie, is not a "first this happened, then that happened" list. It should explain the plot, but be entertaining, and carry to essence of the story. [This is because a shocking number of books have enormous plot holes that authors don't realize until after the book is written and then they are really resistant when readers try to point them out.]
9. Write a completely serious letter (multiple paragraphs) to a company about a product. I wrote a letter to Batiste (the makers of the best dry shampoo out there) questioning why they carry three colors (brown, red, and blonde) but do not carry black when black is the most dominant hair color on the planet Earth. [This is to not take yourself too seriously, but to still work your ability to put together sentences in a way that is compelling.]
10. Write a good ending for the TV show Lost. [Because someone should fucking have to.]