Episode 70: Kalyn Fogarty, author of What We Carry
Kalyn Fogarty shares the inspiration behind What We Carry, a novel that deals with miscarriage, a topic often often underrepresented in women’s fiction.
She shares her personal experience that led to writing a novel of hope around such an important and heart-breaking experience for many women, her writing journey and approach to self-care, and her hope that the novel will be healing for others.
Books Mentioned:
What We Carry by Kalyn Fogarty
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
Circe by Madeline Miller
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive typos!)
Lainey 0:00
Hi, this is Lainey Cameron. I'm here with kailyn Fogarty and we're going to talk about her beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking, uplifting novel What We Carry. Thanks for joining me today.
Kalyn 0:12
Hi, thanks for having me.
Lainey 0:15
And where are you joining me from? Where are you? I see you're in a beautiful back garden setting there.
Kalyn 0:20
I'm in Long Island, New York. Actually, I'm outside in my backyard hiding from my two children right now. So this was the quietest place I could find.
Lainey 0:28
I love it. And why don't we start by, why don't you tell those who are unfamiliar with this beautiful book I wrote just the most amazing five star endorsement for this book, you you capture my heart with it in a topic that is not easy to write about. So why don't you start by just telling folks a little bit about what the book is about.
Kalyn 0:45
What We Carry is the story of Cassidy Morgan. She's a woman in her early 30s, who has a wonderful husband and is very successful in her career. She's an equine veterinarian, and she's ready to start the next phase of her life, which for her is motherhood. After struggling with fertility, infertility, sorry, the couple finally finds themselves pregnant. But miscarry is the pregnancy at 20 weeks. The rest of the novel really touches on how this loss sends ripple effects through all parts of Cassidy's life, and also her husband and some of the other members of her family. So the novel is about grief, it's about loss. But ultimately, it's also about hope, when the couple finds themselves pregnant again. And you know, in the midst of all of this, we're also dealing with the stigma of miscarriage and all the hundreds of complicated emotions that this brings with it. So it's overall, it's a novel of hope, but it deals with kind of the heavy topic of miscarriage that is an often represented infection.
Lainey 1:47
And you're right, I actually one of the things I especially appreciated about this book is I haven't read that many of women's fiction novels that delve into the topic of miscarriage and what it feels like to go through that I was actually just doing another interview on a different podcast where I was talking about, I think there's huge value actually, for husbands to read this book. Because at that point, when a woman is going through this, the last thing they can do is describe everything they're feeling, and you do such a fabulous job of capturing that and capturing the challenges that it creates in a relationship, right? Even a good relationship when you're dealing with grief of this magnitude and level and congratulations. It's beautiful, but novel were excellently portrayed. Thank you. So let's take a quick peek at a review. This one is from Rebecca Hodge. She's the author of Wildland and her own second book actually is just coming out this month. She also writes books that kind of capture the emotions and really take you on an emotional journey. And I love how she says that she says, few losses are as shattering as the death of a child. But when that loss occurs as a miscarriage, parents often find themselves isolated in their grief. This fresh, unflinchingly honest story depicts the chronic ache of grief, the challenge of self forgiveness, and ultimately, the achievement of a new sense of balance with fully drawn characters that will live in your heart long after the last page, this moving portrait is not to be missed. And having read it, I couldn't agree more. Rebecca said it's so well, like I was on this journey with these characters and feeling the emotions and understanding the grief in a way that i'd i'd never really lived that before. You know, the best fiction helps you live in experience. And this really did that for me. So thank you.
Kalyn 3:24
I'm glad that it resonated with you.
Lainey 3:26
So, inspiration, this is a hard, hard question here. Because I think this at least reading this novel, I could tell that the author had personal experience with the topic she was writing, but this wasn't something you just came up with. So I am interested in like, well talk to me about how you came around writing the novel. I think this novel is going to be healing for many people. Was it healing for you to write it? Or was it the opposite? Was it hard to write it?
Kalyn 3:49
So I hope that it's going to be healing for others. That was one of my motivations in writing then, in 2017, I miscarried my own pregnancy at almost 17 weeks, so I wasn't quite as far along as my character in the novel. But after this happened, I found myself feeling very isolated. And, you know, I was grieving and also just very confused, you know, I was so far along, I thought, you know, that I was in the safe zone, so to speak. So I started looking towards the place where I always found a lot of solace, which was books and specifically fiction, you know, in the process, I found a lot of memoirs and self help books, which, although they were beautifully done, it wasn't quite what I was looking for, you know, there's something about getting lost in a book that's not someone's very specific story that kind of helps you to connect in a in a different way. So when I couldn't find it, I kind of got the germ of the idea that maybe I would start writing myself. This was in 2017. And I didn't actually start writing this novel until my first baby Hayden was born in 2018. So I gave myself you know, the time and space there to think and to grieve and to come to terms What exactly I wanted to say on the matter. So I began writing in, I think, the very end of 2018. And finished it actually, right before the birth of my second daughter. So um, you know, I think it was important that I wrote this after having a little time to grieve myself, because if I wrote this, you know, right in the thick of things, I think it would have been a very different novel. So, ultimately, it was very cathartic. And I've, you know, I've spoken with a lot of women and friends and people that have shared with me their own stories of miscarriage. And so far, I'm getting a lot of positive feedback, which is really the most important part in all of this from me. And if I could write this and one person feels like they were seen and felt like they weren't so alone. That's that's really what has been the most amazing part of this for me.
Lainey 5:49
And when you're writing such an emotional topic like this, right, which is coming from that, that experience, do you have any tips for self care? Like, how did you make sure as you were reading this book that, obviously when you read something like this, I imagine you're reliving it a little right, which has got to be really painful, and part of it is getting that pain on the page. But also, that must mean self care is really important, like, how did you manage that?
Kalyn 6:10
So I mean, I think what helped me was I wrote the whole novel in the third person point of view first, which I thought at first, that that was the correct way to write because it was going to put a little more distance between me and the main character, because I really didn't want this to be just my story. I wanted this to kind of encompass, you know, the journey that women who experienced loss and their husbands and their families feel so I wrote the, you know, whole 90,000 words in the third person, and then ultimately went back and rewrote it as if you read the book, you will know it's very far from the third person. But I think this actually gave me a little distance, and I could get the story on the page and kind of just tell the story to myself, you know, in this in terms of self care, having my two babies and my day job, which I'm a horseback riding instructor, so I've always found a lot of comfort in horses and animals. So I think just, you know, keeping in touch with that part of me alongside the writing was very important.
Lainey 7:08
And do you have any advice for others who might want to take a personal experience, whatever that is, and write about it, like anything you've learned as a writer that might be helpful to other writers,
Kalyn 7:19
I think the most important thing is if you're going to write about something that is deeply personal is to be as honest as possible, because I think it does come across on the page, if you're trying to, you know, hit hard on just the theme or trying to, you know, be almost too on the nose, I really tried to just lay it all out there as honestly, even if sometimes it was a little painful to read or to look at, you know, there were some parts of the main characters personality that could sometimes come off maybe a little bit harsh, and, you know, and those were all very honest feelings and experiences. So I think if you can be honest, it does come across on the page, and the readers will notice,
Lainey 7:57
one of the things I thought you captured really well is the relationship with her husband in the book and this concept that no matter how your relationship starts, grief can really tear apart a relationship, especially if you're not dealing with it together, or you're dealing with it in different ways. And I just thought you captured that so well, did you have to do anything in particular to work out how to get that dynamic on the page.
Kalyn 8:21
I mean, I talked to my husband and I you know, I talked to a lot of women who had experience loss and everyone's experience even though it was similar was also so different, you know, I had some people who, you know, do not want to have a baby right away, and others who wanted to, like, you know, just that was all they could think about. And I tried to put myself kind of in each of their shoes and respond to my own way of dealing with the loss and to see how like that might be different and how it was the same and that's kind of how I morph the character of Oh, and together you know, so we had some pieces of my husband and other people that I've talked to and you know, I hope that I express how difficult it can be to mourn something when you're when you're both mourning it in a different way.
Lainey 9:07
Well, the language and the way you captured some of those emotions I find myself highlighting all the way through this book, there were just several points where at I can't remember exactly how you said it. But there was like a point where he's thinking like How can a 10 years of marriage fall apart in 10 days, and it just you captured it so beautifully, that I highlighted parts all the way through this book. It is incredibly well written and congratulations, thank you. So did it change a lot during editing like you said, it changed from first from third person to first person like other than that, what kind of changes did it have to go through?
Kalyn 9:38
So I wrote the whole thing in third person and then I wrote the entire book from the point of view of Cassidy alone. So then, that was, you know, so it was mostly her story, but after writing it, I think an important part of the story was how it affected her husband and you know, also other people in her life. So I I ended up going back and first adding in olan and then adding in two additional characters her mother and her sister and this was basically to her mother was a little bit of a tough character Cassidy and her mom had a lot of conflict to be you know before the pregnancy loss and she was there to really show like how some people had great intentions after a loss to try to help you know a woman through it and it was often you know, didn't come across right or things were said, you know, with great intentions that were often interpreted not as kindly and also just to show the different ways that motherhood affects different women so all four points of view ended up being a lot of words I think I ended at like 140,000 so I ended up cutting a lot of them which ultimately made it a much better story I think it was at that point me telling you know, stuff to myself and after cutting a bunch it's about 100,000 words now.
Lainey 11:01
I think that's fascinating that you felt like you needed the other points of view to tell the whole story like like, we tend to think that if we just write from the perspective of the main character that it'll all come across and I just think it's interesting that you needed those other perspectives you felt at least to get to
Kalyn 11:15
know as I wrote Cassidy heard mom and sister kind of kept popping in more and more and ultimately I decided they needed to have their own chapters to kind of say it from their point of view.
Lainey 11:24
So switching gears a little Do you get a chance to read while your two little kids right and you're working on a book and bringing it up like do you get a chance to read I think it
Kalyn 11:34
I do you know, I love reading I read as much as I can, and pretty widely I love thrillers. I mean, women's fiction is my favorite. I actually just recently read When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain and she's one of my favorite favorite authors. I love The Paris Wife and you know, all of her historical fiction which is I don't always read a lot of that genre. So I was very curious to read this one and I thought it was just so beautifully written I mean, she has an amazing way with words and just the slight thriller aspect but while being very character driven I have been recommending that one to everybody and right now I just started Circe by Madeline Miller. And I might be a little late on the you know, getting on that one but so far I'm really liking
Lainey 12:17
awesome awesome. And let me just show folks before ash My last question here how they can connect with you if they want to connect with you. On Instagram, you're at Kalyn Fogarty, @kfogartyauthor and then www.kalynfogarty.com online and my last question I always like to ask folks is,. is there anything I haven't asked you that you like to talk about in interviews or that you hope to talk about today?
Kalyn 12:44
I mean, I you know, by day I am a horseback riding instructor and that's been one of my passions. Horses are you know before my children before my husband they were you know, my my life growing up and you know in the book Cassidy is an equine veterinarian so that's kind of where that aspect of the book snuck in and you know, I went to college and I was either going to be a horseback rider or that and ended up being a horseback rider and I look back and I I kind of wish I had studied literature English because you know, I think that would have been put to good use because I you know, I love language and writing obviously and but I have no actual formal schooling in that matter.
Lainey 13:24
Well, I'm actually kind of jealous because I'm a horse person. I love horses so the concept that you get to be around horses all day just makes me insanely jealous.
Kalyn 13:30
It's very awesome I must say I'm very lucky.
Lainey 13:33
Well, I encourage folks to go read this book like I said, five star rating absolutely beautiful and the writing oh my goodness for a debut novel Actually, it's not your debut I stand corrected you have a second is your second novel right? Just when
Kalyn 13:45
I wrote in 13 years ago and very, very different genre a little speculative, had a little bit of a love story aspect to it, but this is my first you know, traditionally published novel.
Lainey 13:59
Well, for a first traditionally published second novel, even if it had been your fifth I would have said the same thing which is the writing on this novel is beautiful. You just took me on this amazing touching journey left me hopeful, helped me experience something I could not have experienced in the same way as you wrote about it. So I just wanna say thank you for bringing this novel into the world.
Kalyn 14:18
Well, thank you for having me here to talk with you. And you know, I'm so glad it resonated with you and I do hope that readers who have experienced loss can find it and maybe you know, help heal a little bit.