I know the killer! Okay, I knew who it was earlier but now I could talk about them.
The new plot I worked up over the weekend was inspiring. Managed to write over 2200 words today on Built for Murder following my outline. Before I did that I went to the binder sources in Scrivener and rearranged them into the approximate order of my outline. That filled about half of each chapter and informed me of what I had left to do.
And then I wrote the final chapter.
Writing the conclusion may seem counter-intuitive but was really quite easy to do. I didn’t have to push or pull other scenes into order, write connecting scenes or dialogue, or even think about any of the problems Erich still needs to discover or solve. Instead, I just closed up all my plot threads as effectively as possible and called the first draft done. For that chapter anyway.
Seven other chapters to work on with only two totally empty. I may finally be on the downward slope of this writing project.