Permission for Blank Space in Your Writing

We've all done it. You're writing along, happy as a lark, when suddenly you hit a detail that brings you to a shrieking halt. It could be anything - I need the name of a small city in Italy! I need to know how to escape handcuffs! I need to know who the Prime Minister was in 1963! - and all of a sudden instead of writing, you are sucked into the vortex that is Google.

Don't do it!

I know, it's tempting. I know, "it will only take two minutes," but if you are on a roll, keep writing. Because if you stop to find the name of that charming Italian city, you will never get back to the great scene you've cooked up to happen there. Write the scene, then go back and add in the details.

I recognize that there are some plot points you MUST research before you can write. That's okay. Research. Research your little heart out. Not only is it something you can do, it is something you should do. But research on research time.

The last few chapters of the most recent book I finished was rife with sentences along these lines...
After MC arrived in TOWN, X miles North(?) of where she had been, she realized she had even further to go. But the taxi ride onward would cost at least XX dollars(? find currency of this country?) and she had only XX in her pocket after the last trip.

No, that is not a REAL sentence from what I was writing (Yikes. No.). But you get the idea. Sure, I could have taken the time to find the town, the distances, the monetary amounts, but I could easily continue writing without those details, so that's what I did. The details can be filled in later during times you have set aside for editing or researching, but not during the time you are trying to write.

Give yourself permission to leave blanks and question marks. I promise, once you finish that first draft, going in to fix them is a piece of cake. (Not to mention a wonderful way to make you feel like you're taking leaps and bounds in the editing process. Always a win.)