leftovers #2: madness

This post took me almost a year to finish. I read Akutagawa's short stories in the fall of 2016, sketched out a draft for each story I wanted to write about over the course of the next month, and put the first drafts together a few weeks later. But the post for this story sat untouched in the 'first draft' stage until the following summer.

What happened? I think the problem was one I've alluded to here in the past - I tried to write about two ideas in one post. Madness, indeed.

I finally decided to ditch the topic of semi-autobiographical writing and instead focused on issues of agency. I think the decision was a wise one. It was certainly influenced in part by my reading J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy right around the same time I was trying to work on this post.

The big lesson for me from this experience was understanding the benefit of sitting on a piece of writing. If I focus instead on reading other books, having new conversations, or simply thinking things over just a little longer, I always find myself stumbling into unexpected methods for solving a particularly tricky problem in my work.