KLP Chat: Shara Curlett on Grief, Persistence, and Beyond!

Yeah.

Well, so when I started writing, like I used to write stuff as a kid, right? You know, creativity enters your life in one way or another.

And I was a really super creative kid.

So I loved art.

I also loved sports.

So I was kind of like a multifaceted kid who did everything.

Like I played piano and I did every sport under the sun and love writing.

So I would write a story, handwrite it.

And there's like 200 pages in a refill pad.

And I would fill the whole thing up and then get those brass clips and compile it.

I'd design a cover.

And I think the thing that blows me away even now is it never crossed my mind to be an author.

Like the one thing I found on this podcast is that it's either it never crosses their mind or they meet an author and that's what they wanted to be.

I think that's the most fascinating.

fascinating thing because to me an author wasn't a real person like I didn't comprehend that real people could write these books and that I could do that too I just love to tell my own stories so fast forward in my 20s I went back to writing when I was going through a tough time so I if I was at uni and I was struggling you know boys or whatever it was I would just take to writing and I'd never finish anything it would just just be something that I did and then I had this year and that I likened to kind of like the opposite of four weddings and a funeral.

And I'd never experienced such grief.

You know, I think some people experience it young.

And I was aware of it.

I'd lost my beloved papa.

And so I had that sense.

But this was a year that just, oh, like my husband and I got married and we got pregnant on the honeymoon, which was incredible.

And then he was away on a work trip, and that's when I had a loss.

And so I had my two dogs with me, and it was just the most –

I'll just collect myself because I'm going to – my voice is wavering.

It was a really hard – yeah.