a fatal error?

ok, so, i know this type of thing is completely inappropriate, and as many critics will tell you, this is not allowed, but since i have yet to publish anything, other than in a school newspaper, i am doing this regardless of what any critic will advise ... i am going to write about writing!
i have been working on a new story for almost a year now. this new one does not involve much death, there are no vampires to be seen and the two main characters have something a little more intimate happening than friendship, while i do not know quite what that is yet, i do know this: it is NOT a vampire novel and the events of said story line will always prevail in the favor of the two aforementioned characters .... eventually.
now, the reason for the gross diversion of tactical writing could have been due to many things, but the main reason is this: my vampire novel was becoming my life.
every song i heard on the radio held some relevance, every person in my life reminded me of some character, every movie i was watching had a vampire in it, every book i was reading had a vampire in it, and yes, even customers became the basis for some attribute of my characters, and i was even beginning to think of myself as a character! EVERYTHING began to hold some relation to the story.
now, some of you may think that this type of immersion is a good thing. it means that the story is truly within you and the flow of the plot is moving along, and viola! you have a wonderful piece of work! sadly, i have found this not to be the case, and in truth, i think it became more of a hindrance than a motivator.
so, after printing out my draft in its entirety (over 300 pages) and giving it to a dear friend to read, i ditched it.
at first i had thought that i just needed a little break, a few weeks while she took a look, but the weeks soon became months, and months soon became a few more months, and i soon found myself on the other side of the story .... and suddenly a new set of characters came along and decided to settle into my creative space for a while.
the while turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months ... and, yeah, you get the idea ... i suddenly had another story line to work on and the characters of my vamp novel went into the background.
the truly amazing thing about this, is that they did not return until i gave them the ok.
none of them were anywhere to be seen until my mind realized it had been almost a year since i had printed out the draft, and that's when the main character came back to me, and she made me realize something scarier than any vampire novel that could ever be written - claudia is me!