No biographical subject is ever on hold with the orthodontist. If there's a dry spell, it's your job to curtail or eliminate it.
Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to extract substance, to identify cause and axiomatic effect. You subsist on the tactical omissions, the hollow words, the oddly unconnected dots.