Which way is up?

Rich has been told (and I mean told ) by an agent that he has to write with more fluency, more freedom, if he is to be published. And I'm sure he will do this. He will get that elusive deal. I'm sure he will do that, too.
So then - how about me? How do I measure up to that criteria? Subjective, in this post, but I've always felt that I write with fluency. Whatever I managed to do in the past, the polished effect seemed to be there. Except, I didn't polish. It came out as it ended up. However much I planned - and I didn't plan much in the early days - what you saw was what I wrote from the start. Very little editing; just moving the odd word or sentence here and there. Sometimes I would write whole drafts and there were barely any crossings-out or changes. A mistake? I don't know. I don't feel so. And you know, wherever I worked, too, I'd take reports and rehash them into a more readable form, increasing or decreasing the volume as I felt necessary, stating the obvious into a more exact form of information, and so on. People liked what I did. But the report writing's all gone now - I removed myself from Local Govt, and feel so much more free now to think my own way forward. It's been difficult, but the whole point was to try and give myself more mental freedom.
Self-praise? A legend in my own mind? Deluded? You could be right. Only, this new story... well, having planned and written lots of it since mainly mid-2007, I know I've really struggled with the beginning. The fluency has been hard to capture. In the past, I would have just carried on and then returned to the beginning. But this time, I had made my mind up that this beginning would be a beginning worth having, and that the rest would follow in a manner I could be proud of. And that I would write no further chapters until the beginning was completed. (Though I did manage to revise one ;-))
In the end, I don't mind saying that this has been the slowest-created chapter in the history of my life (Life? I've almost forgotten what life is!) I've never fallen over so much in anything I've written. Ever.
Last night, however, was a bit of a breakthrough. I actually wrote some good stuff! It wasn't very long, but it did interest me. And I felt that I was moving towards where I eventually wanted to be at the ending of the chapter, and in other parts of the story. I feel like I'm writing the beginning as Solvey and Noel the Ultimate Proofreader feel I should be writing it. In my own way, though - which is not how I was feeling over the past few months.
Perhaps there was a bit of jar in my head with the loss of the prologue. There was so much information inside it, with no 'tell' as far as I could see. Just it was a bland piece of writing. Too much ice; not enough fire. I can rewrite it, or at least put more into it one day. But I will not be revisiting the prologue until the story is finished.
The good thing is that the beginning has much more life to it and I don't think I'm too far off completing it. Then I'll be able to write the rest of the story in a much quicker and more fluid manner. That's how I feel right now. There's so much still to do, and I daren't consider a second or third book any more until I'm way down the line with this first one. I have ideas, but Noel has insisted I stop writing with an eye on the future and just write in the 'now'. For now. So I am.
Much more hopeful than I was yesterday - more than I've been for months. It's a result.