The story that won't die

Sometimes you have to give up on a project completely before the way to write it becomes clear. Sometimes it takes giving up on it repeatedly over a period of years. Sometimes after you've buried it for what you swear is the final time and gone skipping on your merry way, you are startled to find it dancing in your path, waving its zombie arms, crumbs of dirt falling from it. "Hey just had a GREAT idea for how you can tackle me from a different point of view / rewrite the ending / turn a subplot into the main plot!" it will say. And you sigh and follow it off to the keyboard, because what else do you have to do with the rest of your life?