[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh

it's frequent that people go back to earlier chapters to make accomodations for actions or ideas that have come up later in the process.

This. In my experience (which is... a fair bit) no matter how strong your start is, there's no way to account for ideas that will be accrued as part of the writing process. I'm even now editing the beginning of my own novel to work in a change I thought of after finishing chapter 6.

The only danger is one of never finishing, if you keep coming up with news ideas (might be guilty of this, myself). If you can put down an iron-clad outline of scenes from beginning to end and stick to it, all the power to you. That seems unrealistic to me, though.

I guess my point is that you shouldn't worry too much about the beginning, because it's likely that you'll make significant changes to it, anyway. If you can get a skeleton of the complete story written, you can then go back and fill in the muscle and skin (or, a smooth-flowing plot and polished prose, rather.)

And just an idea, I haven't actually been bold enough to try this myself, but maybe disconnect your internet and try to write. I find I always get distracted if there's a forum just two clicks away.