I do a lot of pre-plotting of stories, and I often find that if I'm looking ahead at a plot morass that I cannot continue even first draft writing until I've at least mapped the primary events. Which means that once that primary writing is done that I'm fairly content with plot, characters, etc. I do need to become more comfortable with letting stuff sit at least a few hours before posting it, because some verbal tics that get past in primary writing aren't as clear on a later read-through. I'm 90-95% happy with what I have at the end of primary writing, because I will edit as I go if the sentence I've just written doesn't feel right. I can't let things I know are wrong fester behind me, it's like a rock in my shoe.

Like Typo, I don't like to revise as I go since getting that first draft means I can get it done. Then I rewrite until it feels okay.

Bear in mind I've only written the one novel, and I don't have all that much external validation that it's any good.

I've got to decide on my next story. One is SciFi set on a tidally locked planet where a colony has dissolved. They are divided by a stormy and dangerous twilight zone on the edges of the day-side and night-side. The relatively primitive (they have it much rougher than the night-siders for various reasons) day-siders live in communal tribes with increasingly draconian rules as resources and shelter get more and more scare. The night-siders have more technology and more land. They have a coal-fired laissez-faire society where the very wealthy run everything. The story centers around a primitive day-sider ending up trapped on the night-side where she becomes a catalyst for change in a town owned by the owner of the coal mines the town mines.

The other possible story in epic/contemporary fantasy with our world sandwiched between a more spiritual realm and a more base realm (id, ego, superego, heaven and hell, etc...) and paranormal stuff is a result of the intersection of these realms, and they are places the soul may flow to after death. It follows the story of an agent from the spiritual realm being brought into our world (which makes him an angel of sorts), a very traumatic process. The people who are supposed to tell him his mission are dead, he has to discover his mission, deal with temptations of flesh, discover good and evil aren't the same as spirit realm and base realm, and his mission has some dramatic twists. I'll probably have ghosts, angels, demons, clockwork automatons with trapped souls, and vampire-ish creatures that are the basis for vampire legends.

Can't decide yet.

Gud, have you read Zelazny's Jack of Shadows? It's set on a day/night world.

Nope, never even heard of it.

I don't write drafts. I'm a horrendous perfectionist - a sentence or paragraph has to be perfect before I'll move on. This is not so good for my writing process, and I definitely need to work on it.

Roger Zelazny is as a god and I adore nearly everything he ever wrote. But you have to like flights of poetic language that aren't very linear at times.

Zelazny did get away from me a few times but I love Doorways in the Sand.

I have three copies of the entire Amber series--both of them--finally getting hold of the Great Book of Amber so I don't have to go "Where the hell is Vol. 4!" ever again.

Unfortunately my Great Book of Amber fell apart from reading too many times.

As much as I love the Amber series, This Immortal will always hold the place of honor in my heart. Although, I ♥ all his stories.