Crisis of Confidence

It's amazing, writing this thing, how scared I am of moving forward past the point the story is at currently. I'm spending a lot of time going back to earlier scenes and filling them in rather than pushing the story forward.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I rely a lot on my characters to dictate how things are going to go and I let them drive the story. Often, I'm surprised at things they do. Writing a mystery is tough -- you need to have some idea of what the final outcome is, and I do, but the problem is that I've set Charlie Bonnet up to be this waffling, somewhat weak fraud of a detective and right now he's having a huge "should I keep going or should I give up" crisis.... Not that I personally am -- at 35,000 words, there's no way I can stop now -- but what if he decides to give up? Story's over. And he never finds out all the secrets.....

I've been putting off the standard-issue road trip/change of scenery that I used in 2003, but it's about to happen.

Also: started reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler last night. Talk about a brilliant book. Just the very beginning is a great hook, an amazing character set up, brilliant description, great dialogue.... Damn.