Familiarity breeds…oh dear, not contempt?

I have been working so hard editing Night Vision; I’ve read it forwards, I’ve read it backwards, I’ve read all the scenes with one character, and all the scenes with another, I’ve read it out loud once and I’m reading it out loud again. I have slashed twenty-eight and a half thousand words, that’s nearly 20% fewer words, I’ve cut the pages from 427 A4 pages to 320, so there are 25% fewer pages… And when I’m not sitting here working, my characters are reliving scenes from their story in my head…

I am so nearly there, the final touches before publication day of 28th February (I hope!) and I’m beginning to become a little… um dare I say, disenchanted with my characters… NO!! No, surely not? Someone remarked about one of my other novels, that by the time they were halfway through they were fed up with the main character, luckily they did keep going till the end because they were sufficiently intrigued by the plot, and found the story exciting! Now I am haunted by the thought that my characters might be boring, or irritating, or exasperating…

I have to believe in my story, I have to have faith in myself as a writer… and I have to convince myself that it’s only because I’ve been living and breathing, sleeping and dreaming Night Vision for the last three months that I am becoming a little frazzled with my people!

Five days to go!!