Hmmm. If you feel like you're retreading the same ground, you could challenge yourself to look at it from a new direction, try a different angle. Sometimes very artificial limitations can get my creative juices flowing: all dialog, no tags, no names, having a character do something completely out of character and figuring out why it's in character for them. Exercises for the brain, creativity, and communicative facility.

I generally find the only writing of mine that I truly dislike are the times when I've tried to force a story to go a direction contrary to its nature. If what I've got are torture and torment, that's what I dish out. Doesn't mean I have to write it, but trying to sculpt that piece of mental wood into something that's not in there just gets me one ugly-ass piece of scrap wood.

Maybe it's different for you. *shrugs*