20th Anniversary Interviews - Part 2: Writing In Difficult Times

This participant interview focuses on Kara Reynolds, who participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2010 after a miscarriage. Content warning for discussion of pregnancy loss.

Q: What NaNoWriMo memory stands out to you?

A: I started doing NaNo in 2010, after a miscarriage that left me feeling terrible about myself and life in general. Doing NaNo helped me have something to look forward to every day at a time when I really needed it. It had a huge impact on my healing. 

Q: I’m very sorry to hear about your miscarriage. I know it might be difficult to talk about.

A: It’s not a difficult subject for me to talk about, and actually I’m a big believer in talking about it because a lot of people feel like they can’t be open about pregnancy loss and that can hinder people’s healing. 

Q: What I’m interested in discussing is how NaNoWriMo helped with the healing process. What was that first novel about?

A: NaNo helped me immensely with healing because it gave me something to focus on and work towards, which kept me from being immersed in my sadness. My husband was in school and worked full-time, so once my son was asleep I often had hours to myself every night. NaNo helped me fill those hours with creativity, and even success once I realized I was going to hit 50k! I hadn’t felt successful in a while, so that energy really helped me remember how to be happy again. 

Q: I’m struck by the kind of… dual role that NaNoWriMo played: both as a distraction from sadness and a pathway out of it. Would you like to talk about the journey between the two, or the relationship between those at all?

A: Yes, I’d say that’s an accurate way to describe it. Everyone deals with grief differently, of course, but for me it was very helpful to have a distraction from my feelings. And I think what made it a pathway out of grief (instead of just a temporary distraction) was that it gave me a goal I could work on as well as a creative outlet. Creativity can be an important part of healing for many people; I am the kind of person who is terrible at most forms of creative expression, so writing fills that need for me. I’d like to say I wrote something really deep that year that helped me process my feelings, but I did the opposite: I wrote something light and fluffy and fun because those feelings were missing from my life.

Q: What was your novel about?

A: It was a coming-of-age story about a girl breaking free from her family responsibilities and finding herself on a summer road trip to visit Shakespeare Festivals. It was the first novel I’d ever actually finished, even though I’d started a lot over the years. NaNo gave me the discipline to complete a novel.

When I finished, my husband threw a little party with some of our friends where I got to read an excerpt from my work, and it felt amazing to be celebrated for an accomplishment instead of an object of people’s pity for something I’d lost. Not that their sympathy wasn’t appreciated, but it was also so helpful to be seen as something else.

Kara is currently serving as ML for the USA::Wyoming::Elsewhere region.

Follow her on Twitter @Kara_Reynolds7, and visit her website.