I found a major plot hole in my scribbled notes and almost had an anxiety attack. Oh boy, this is gonna be one long and difficult journey :D

One other thing that really annoys me is my insecurity towards my written stuff. I always have this feeling that the text I produce is really poor and no-one would want to read it.

Any ideas how to get rid of that?

Easy. Write it all to the best of your ability, publish it, and see if anybody wants to read it.

Seriously. Insecurity is good. It drives you to excel.
Expect more. Writing is a frightening experience.

But once you fix the hole, your novel is one step closer to being better.

I actually fixed the hole. No, I made it better. It makes so much sense now and I am genuinely relieved :D

Yes, It's a good feeling. A sense of achievement (a real one).

My best advice is something that can be applied to a lot of things but it's still a very simple advice - finish it.

Just jumping on writing a full novel without a lot of previous experience in writing is quite a task (heck, it's quite a task even if you have experience) so it isn't unlikely you may grow tired of your current project, wanting to move on and maybe write something else. In that case I think it's important that you stick with what you started, and if it's a too large project: make it smaller!

I have a lot of friends (plus myself) that set out with grand ideas for books to write and then never finished them, which is a shame imo because when jumping from project to project a lot of interesting ideas never got to see the light of day.

This is probably the most important advice there is. If you start something, finish it. New ideas will come up all the time, and you'll probably think each idea sounds better than the last. However, if you keep going with new ideas, you'll never finish. Plus you get more and better practice from a project that you finish, meaning your next project will likely be that much better (especially if you have some peers who can give you HONEST feedback on your work).

Nice to see a snarky blue responding to Licurg... now everyone, go buy a Sacrifice to the blue! :-p

But seriously, KtC... just write. You're not going to get better advice than that. Eventually you'll need to plot out the book - for some post-it notes mapping out might work - for others, some other method might work best. But the key thing is to do whatever encourages that creative spark and worry about the technical details once you feel you've emptied the creative well.Cause like with everything - there are the good parts and there are the sucky parts - mapping and editing are down the road for you perhaps.

Hey, some writers start with the map but that doesn't sound like you... so follow your own personal muse - she's usually a pretty good guide to what is going to work best for you even if you never end up with some "finished product"... after-all, it's all about the journey when it comes to art - and well life as well.

I lock my inner pessimist in a cupboard.

Being serious: what helped me in the past was a determination to write every single day. After a couple of weeks of continued writing I had managed to drown it out. Unfortunately, real life and illness then punched me in the jaw, so I'm working back to that level myself.

This is proving to be really, really tough :D

I have a dilemma, though. Should I write this in a smaller scale with nationwide happenings in the background, or just have those be the main point? I do favor the smaller scale, though, as the story is about characters, their motivations, their lives. There are major things happening politically and all that, but the main characters are not that invested in politics.

Damn, this is both hard and scary at the same time, but weirdly exciting! And fun!

Opinion incoming.

You write what you care about. If you care about these politics/happenings and can present them in an interesting way, you put them in there. If you yourself don't care for them, you probably won't be able to make them sound interesting because you might not have fun writing them.
I don't know. I'm not organized in any way whatsoever but when you're having fun writing something, people will most likely have fun reading it. Works both ways, I suppose. So if you can get excited about these politics, go ahead. I trust you could bring them into the story despite the characters not caring, as long as you care enough.
You write what you feel needs writing.

I think these days, if people are going to write about fiction, that they should make sure they do their research.

Sometimes, the best writing is fiction that reads like truth, and has truth behind it to support its fictional material.

What do you mean with research?

Well, let's say that you're going to write a script for a show which has computer programmers. The last thing you want in there is the sound of an old MFM hard-drive squeaking away in the background and having some 'hacker' looking at JavaScript on a Web page.

Let's say you're going to write a script which involves medicine or doctors and you don't know what it's like from their perspective inside the emergency room.

I tend to find that people who work in certain professions find stories laughable when the writers get their profession wrong or cast it in a bad light.

One writer I appreciate and has actually done his homework is Michael Chrichton.

Runaway (aside from some cheesy acting) has become a reality, and "The Andromeda Strain" was years ahead of "The Stand" and I still see "Looker" as being somewhat true to life these days (but without the killings). :)

Man, there are a lot of long posts in this thread. You'd think they were written by a bunch of writers, or something. :p

I'm not going to rehash what everyone else has already said. Instead, consider this perspective: it's possible to write an entire book's worth of interconnected short stories, building the world and/or exploring the characters a bit more with each one. Examples include Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

That may or may not work for you, but at least it's food for thought.