One of the hardest things about writing novels, for me, is that after a while, it gets hard to stick with the story. You get bored of writing about the same thing and another thing I've noticed is that you start to hate your characters.
Horrible characters? Terrible plot? Total buzz kill. It's hard to reach back in the past and recover the enthusiasm you had for writing this story in the first place. After all, if you hated the story back then, you wouldn't have written it, right? So how come you hate it now?
I think I've found the reason. Growth. Whether it's you or your character, one of you is changing. When I was writing "The Dead and Dying Embers" I slowly began to hate Shane. When I first started writing the book, I thought he was a great guy. He was sensitive, philosophical, kind, and emotional, but now when I look at Shane, I see a whiner who doesn't deserve the girl he's going after.
What sucks is that I based Shane on somebody I know so I began to hate the person I based him on too, which I was not happy about because that person is a great friend.
Note to self: don't base characters on people you know. That's really not what this is about though. When you get to the point where you hate your character, do what I do with real people. I looked at my friend again and "cut off" the bad parts of him to see what was left, what was good. What was left saved my friendship with that person.
So if I can do that with a person, I should be able to do that with a character. I don't hate Shane anymore.
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