Losing Perspective

Writing Hidden Underground over the past seven years, the project's become such a part of me that I sometimes feel like I'm losing perspective. My list of criticsms of it could fill pages, but I don't know how to fix them, because I can't look at it objectively, even when I put it aside for months. In my self-critical viewpoint, I'm probably blowing the extent of its problems out of proportion.

My mind pulls up the flaws and goes over and over them, nagging at me that it'll never be finished or ready for publishing. The problems feel huge, overwhelming, like a sore in your mouth when you run your tongue over it. The tone is overall too dark, my mind tells me. The characters aren't fleshed out enough, the plot is too cliche, the main characters' development is too slow, it's way too long, etc., etc.

The thing is, with all of my new WIPs, I know where I'm going, and I can sense whether what I'm doing is working or not. Character development is easy and writing the story feels light as the wind.

I probably need distance again, but the 2nd draft nags to be written and bugs me at night until I agree to work on it in the morning.

So what do you folks do when these blues hit? How do you refresh your confidence and get inspired to keep going?