Which way is up?

While drinking hot chocolate on this icy cold winter's night,  I pondered my next literary move. It was, as the modern idiom goes, a no-brainer: I have to write what appeals to me most. At each time.
It's a funny thing, but to have got this far, and to have come up with what I have, is hugely down to all of the influences from my early life right up until now. In short: my own instinct as to what I would have liked to read and write, had I been looking in any bookstore. This had to be something I hadn't read before, nor seen/viewed in a movie. And I've read a million books and movies...  I needed to trust whatever it was that brought me to this point.
So, consider this: I walked the streets of Shields and Newcastle, by day and night, in all kinds of weather standing in such places that appealed to my sense of 'witness', imagining what may have happened in these places. Afterwards, I discovered that Charles Dickens did the same. Bits of Dickensian life are dotted about my story. I feel like I'm walking the same path as the great man. Of course, his reputation and history is rather up there, while mine is somewhat 'down there'.
Unless I get it right, I'll always be on that lower level! Gotta dig deep...
I'm off from the 27th for eight days, during which time I'll have written stuff that will take me further down the road to completion. It's a long job and no amount of trying to speed things up is going to help. Once I've written most of the book, I'll return to the beginning and polish the good bits, eject the poor bits, and ensure the beginning reads more as I intended it to, not how it ended up. But nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and the slow burner of a beginning can, with a few tweaks, begin to rev along at a faster pace. It's fun, serious fun, but enjoyable, too. Got to keep on!
The plot Dickens - erm, thickens... ;-)