May beastly things happen in my stories but not in my writing of them.
Eleven stories in to Story-a-Day and my brain seemed to have suffered a structural collapse. I finished the story because, well, Time said to.
But what really–no maybe about it–bothers me about this story is what it lacks throughout. A layer is missing, but I can’t see what the layer should be.
Do I even know what this story is about? Maybe.
At what point in a story do you know something has gone wrong. And I don’t mean that the characters discover what their problem is. No. When you’re writing, presumably you begin where you think you should. Well, at what point in the writing do you realize things have gone astray? And has that ever turned out okay or is the entire journey then lost?
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
I know something is going wrong when I get bored in the writing. (I tend to bore easily, but even so…) The only way to make it go right: stop, and start something else — next section, chapter, whatever — and return to it later. Then it usually becomes obvious that I was bored with solving the wrong problem: subconsciously, I knew what the REAL problem was, but was avoiding it by tackling a problem I didn’t really have there.