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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46757
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

No and yes.

No, you don't need to feel your character's emotions to be able to write scenes that involve them. It's the same in real life -- if a friend comes to you feeling extremely upset about his dog dying, then making yourself feel the same sort of distress is an incredibly ineffective way of helping him. You'll just end up miserable together.

What you need is related, but different. You want to have compassion for his situation and emotions, which means you understand them (more than superficially) and connect to how he's feeling without being consumed by it yourself. Then you can offer the support of someone who is outside of the situation, not drowning in it. (You can also be outside without being compassionate, and tell him to just get over it or whatever, but that isn't going to help.)

It's the same when writing your characters. Writing about a homicidal maniac's anger is not going to go better if you're pissed off. But it also isn't going to work if you can't relate to why _that_ person, in _that_ situation, would be angry.

On the other hand, when revising your work, you _do_ want your writing to evoke in you some degree of the emotion you're going for. Or at least, get to where you can viscerally feel how your character would be reacting with that emotion. You can't expect your readers to feel something that you don't. (But again, your readers don't need to feel the killer's anger either, they just need to understand and relate to it at some level.)

As @amadeus points out, though, it's ok if you lose that feeling by the 364th rereading.

Original score: 1