Hi SEers! Denise here to talk about when a story hits some unexpected roadwork and comes grinding to a halt.

The ideas and words flow until that one day, and they don’t. It’s like riding in a convertible, watching the sunset on a warm summer evening. A cool breeze is blowing the story onto your computer screen or paper. Everything is right in your world until that one moment when you see a stop sign ahead, and everything suddenly stops.

I had this happen to me last fall. The idea came to me, and I jumped right into writing the story. Several pages in, I researched to ensure I was accurately writing about a real person. The problem was I had written an entire plot around what I assumed was correct but turned out to be false.

At that point, I had to stop and rethink the entire story. The…