Just a couple of other notes -

- Beta readers and critique partners (strangers) will always be hit or miss with their reviews and honesty.
- So will friends/family
- If you are in school for something other than writing, take a creative writing class as one of your electives. Other students often just don't care about your feelings.
- Try checking for local groups. For instance, Maryland has the Maryland Writer's Association with local chapters and critique groups.

Angels aren't really male or female so as far as the names... <shrug>

Book(s) of Enoch will be your best bet historically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch

Good luck and enjoy!

That's a tough spot to be in - hamstrung by an outline and stuck for motivation/fire.

If it helps, I outline on the fly. As I write those scenes that are in my head, if I think at all about order or get ideas for how to lay things out, I enter them into a basic outline. It isn't my limit, but my guide. I use that outline to know what to write about next. It is sort of just notes on the scenes I want to work on, and it becomes a very basic outline. Helps me to not get stuck.

Yeah... continuity issues... about that... <whistle>

That is definitely one of the potential hazards in this style of writing. 

That is a very common problem. Many people drown in it - 10-20k words here, another 10-20k words somewhere else. Then they have a bunch of half-written projects around.

So do you know where the climax is or how it will happen? Is that scene in your head anywhere? Or are there other scenes floating around in your head?

Write them. Write it out. Keep the fire burning by writing the parts you keep thinking about. If you don't have parts that you keep thinking about, maybe it really isn't the right project, at least for now.

Another thing that comes to mind is something Neil Gaiman said in one of the many forewards/afterwards of "Good Omens". He was talking about Terry Pratchett and said this:

Then again, Terry is that rarity, the kind of author who likes writing, not having written, or Being a Writer, but the actual sitting there and making things up in front of a screen.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Terry_Pratchett:_An_Appreciation

I guess all I'm saying is that we all (or at least most) feel like that at some point.

I'm thinking about it, but at the same time I'm finally in the home stretch with my main project, and it has taken me a while. I'm pretty concerned about not finishing it up before moving on to something else. If I can somehow finish the first draft by Nov, I'll do it.

Re: mysteries
Recently Jim said, while on a "Supernatural CSI" panel, that the way to do a mystery is (paraphrase here) "Write a newspaper headline with all of the information - how it happened, who did it, where it happened, etc. Then take away parts until you are left with what your detective character knows. Sometimes that is nothing at all."

Re: revealing magic
Another panel (no Jim, but some other authors like Brandon Sanderson, John Ringo, and Timothy Zahn) basically said "Reveal as little as you can get away with. Make sure your magic is consistent, but don't go into detail if you don't have to."

I do agree, though, that for DF there is a need, but it still all comes out over time.