Bet On The Hare

This Is Going Somewhere (Maybe)

Recently my partner and I were talking about the Tortoise and the Hare fable, because ridiculousness. (Ridiculousness here refers to both our conversations and the fable.)

I hesitate to call our takedown of it “unpacking” since that implies some complexity and nuance where there really isn’t any. Anyone who grew up hearing about this knows the moral is “slow and steady wins the race.” Which simply is not a given. It’s not a statement of objective fact. It’s actually really moronic and basically a demonstration of society’s need to instill unflappable hope (perhaps in things like upward mobility despite that one is always closer to abject financial ruin than to being even a demi-millionaire). Hope isn’t bad, of course. I mean, delusion is, but. If you’re familiar with the fable, you know it’s not just hope in your own efforts. The story of the tortoise and the hare, the success of the tortoise, relies on the gloating, dismissive, irresponsible squandering of the hare’s natural talents. In order for the tortoise to win, he must have the moral high ground. An established humility and blissful gentle nature. Which means the story isn’t about “slow and steady [winning] the race.” But we already knew that.

My main point of course is going to seem nitpicky, and like I, a former student of sociology, do not understand fables: tortoises and hares don’t race. They don’t race each other. There are not regular heats taking place in nature. The race is imposed. It’s a construction, meant to demonstrate a moral. And that seems like a nothing issue, but it’s the whole problem. Having to construct an unnatural competition in order to instill real, applicable life lessons—like, am I making sense? It’s insanity.

Sidebar: this reminds me of the common refrain “like crabs in a barrel.” I hear this so often when Black or otherwise marginalized people, but usually Black people, are being chided for infighting. It conveys a very clear antiBlack fabrication of some unique character flaw that is interior in origin, rather than dealing with the fact that crabs don’t naturally occur in barrels. We’re ignoring the invisible hand of an oppressor who set up the scheme in the first place. LIKE.

Okay but why did I come here with a picture of Bugs Bunny and a request for people to consider that fables being morality programmers is the exact reason you should take them seriously not overlook their inherent flaws? Because writing. (My writing, not yours. There’s no advice forthcoming.)

So, if you follow me on Twitter, you might already know the situation with my two current WIPs. And I feel the need here to mention that I don’t identify as a writer who works on multiple books at once. Which might seem surprising to you if you were around for the great deluge of 2021-2022.

In the span of nine months, I released three novels.

June 2021: A Chorus Rises (Tor Teen)

September 2021: So Many Beginnings (F&F)

February 2022: Cherish Farrah (Dutton)

You had to be there.

I’m asked a lot if these were all books I had in my arsenal, just waiting for A Song Below Water’s bestselling debut so I could unleash my already complete darlings in a veritable torrent. No, babes. They were not pre-written.

After finishing ASBW (which came out June 2020), I wrote a couple of first chapters to decide what my Book 2 for Tor would be. If memory serves, neither of them were A Chorus Rises (which at the time of drafting was called Naema’s Had It Up To Here, s/o Queen Latifah), because as we know, that would be my spite book. People were wildin’ and talking very slick about my 16yo Black girl and Mother (that’s me, I’m Mother) was not having it.

Can I take a moment here to talk about how integral my editor Diana Pho’s feedback and guidance were for Naema. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about how much I did not care about the audience in writing that book (which, before Diana’s direction, was not originally divided between Naema and the Media POV, which I effing adore and think echoes the dual POV of ASBW to great effect). Working with Diana on both those books, but especially A Chorus Rises, is the only way you get the book that’s on the shelves. So standing ovation for the powerhouse that is Diana Pho, please.

Anyway. The point is once I had three first chapters and had realized Naema’s story was Book 2, I drafted it. After that was sent off, I would’ve started writing Cherish Farrah (which was always the title). This was a very different drafting experience for me. Very long discovery period, meaning I didn’t try to write a synopsis because the character is the catalyst, and I needed to be hip to hip with her, not making decisions from a distance. (Spoiler Alert: this is currently happening again, and I really do love it.)

But then, F&F asked me to write So Many Beginnings, and that moved very quickly, so I put aside the long partial of Cherish Farrah and wrote SMB in its entirety. And when I tell you there are no two voices more different than the multi-character close 3rd POV of So Many Beginnings and the claustrophobically close 1st person POV of Cherish Farrah, baby. Which says nothing of the fact that at different points, I had to stop drafting to do edits on something else, because soon, all three books were under contract? I have no memory of this, I just know it happened.

So the point of all that was: I have written multiple books at once before. And I don’t think of myself as someone who does that, so I totally forget about it.

CUT TO TODAY. Or thereabouts.

I’m basically gonna let Twitter tell the rest of this. But in April, I tweeted about my Absurdist Dark Comedy. It’s…my absolute f***ing jam, babes. Like, I love it so hard. It’s also Very Important, so I didn’t draft it in a frenzy. I wrote a full synopsis. It’s everything to me.

Swear.

I emailed the interrupting cow idea to my agent on August 10, couldn’t sleep on August 12th, and apparently started drafting the next day?

Listen.

Life comes at you fast.

The new WIP (because this has gone on long enough, you know what this is, it’s time to be honest) is about to lap the Absurdist beauty. So when I say My Next Novel…it’s maybe probably this one. [Redacted actual publishing talk and goings-on.]

Sometimes the one you write faster really does win, babes. They’re not in competition; they’ll both come out, Lord say the same and the creek don’t rise, but sometimes fast is a good thing. Sometimes it means a story has ensnared you.

Sometimes the Churchianity Horror you needed was keeping you up at night the whole time. Or not very long at all before you gave in and speed-drafted a sellable partial.