A look into the future

As you know, I've spent a lot of time at the beginning of my latest work, looking at it from different angles and deciding which is the best way to begin. Writing it all out has been a new and learning experience as I had a lot of information already to hand. It feels like I'm not having to try too hard to write it all out in full. Slightly worrying, but if that is the effect of planning, the premeditated thought, then maybe that's how it will be throughout.
However, I do know that at some stage I'm going to have to call a halt and take stock as to where I am with it all. I do have some chapters already written from a while back, which seem to fit neatly after the new chapters I've done for the beginning. That is a real positive.
However, regardless of how many chapters I've done, and how many fit together, I'm going to have to stand behind the prologue, look down the line, and see if my story is going in the direction I've planned. And if not, decide if it's the best way to go, or whether I should attempt to change things to make it go where I planned.
This is on top of simply looking at what I've done thus far and checking that the writing is as good as it can be.
Anyone writing a book should do this on a regular basis. There should be no greater critic/editor/proofreader/reader than yourself. You have to develop an eye for problems in your own work. Not just problems, either, but positives, good things.
It's difficult when it's all such a subjective process. So, you have to become objective about your own work. Not simple.
One of the best ways of achieving this is to put your work down, close it all up, and leave it. Not just for a day or two, but for at least a week, maybe two. Enter it in your diary, or your computer reminder system. If you think of anything during this time, then think about it, properly, but not deliberately (let thoughts happen, don't force them) and write anything from this on separate sheets of paper. Then, at the end of that time, go back to your work. You will have removed yourself sufficiently enough to view your work with a little less subjectivity, and I promise this will help you look at things in a better light.
It doesn't take long to begin writing, or amending, and for you to become subjective again, so don't worry about that - you do want to be published, after all!
That's how I do it.