3) If you don’t like it, don’t write it.

Are you speaking of subject matter or your tale in general? I tend to look at things that I don't necessarily like to write about and push myself by writing about it a bit. That isn't to say that I write on subject matter that i really dislike. I've no want to commit a M/m story to the printed page since I have no passion for it. Still, it may be a way for me to expand my abilities and I have thought on it once or twice.

4) This one isn’t a tip so much as something I’ve learned, plus a query. I find writing the crisis part of a story to be very difficult. I always fall in love with my protagonists, and usually hate my antagonists. So when I do awful things to my heros, it hurts. My brain also usually wends its way through some VERY dark corridors as I imagine what is happening. The stuff that ends up on the page is usually much milder than the creepy and icky stuff that slimed up my mind while I was working on it.

My query is this: do other authors have a difficult time writing these hard bits? And, if so, do they have any tips on how to deal with it

Oh, but I enjoy the dark stuff. I can't recall a story I wrote where bad shit didn't occur. In fact, the story I was most proud of writing was extremely nasty to my protagonist. The ending was entirely written (in my head) before the rest of the story was even thought of.

I do have a tip, though: Compartmentalize. Write the bad shit as the bad person doing committing the evil acts. Get rid of the nice person and write like you are evil. It sure worked for me on "Mel and the Sadist". The main character was a real prick and I relished eliminating the nice guy from me while I wrote that little tale. I just wish I had not been in a hurry to get that one in the library - oh, the mistakes!