THE WRITER’S EYE with Susan Beckham Zurenda & guest author Kristy Woodson Harvey

THE WRITER’S EYE with Susan Beckham Zurenda & guest author Kristy Woodson Harvey

Finding Inspiration in Unexpected Places

Many authors find inspiration from articles they read or hear in the media. For example, the great Southern author Flannery O’Connor often used newspaper accounts as source material for her fiction.  Stories she read in the Atlanta Constitution about criminals between 1950-1952 inspired parts of the plot, circumstances, and name of The Misfit in the author’s most famous short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” 

New York Times best-selling author Kristy Woodson Harvey was also inspired by stories in the media for the subject of her upcoming novel.  She’d read a few articles about mommunes, but it was listening to a radio interview on the subject that sparked Beach House Rules, her novel out this month. I had never heard of a mommune and had to look up the definition. It is a co-living arrangement in which single mothers, or single parents share household expenses, childcare, and responsibilities, forming a community to support each other and their children. My curiosity was piqued, and now I can’t wait to read my friend Kristy’s new novel. I hope you enjoy reading about Kristy’s inspiration:

One of the most common questions I’m asked at author events is: Where do you get your inspiration? And, often, it’s not a question I can answer. After I wrote my first book, Dear Carolina, which released almost ten years ago in May 2015, it was like turning on a faucet. Ideas were everywhere! Everything was inspiration!

Even still, I’d never gotten an idea for a book in quite the same way I did for Beach House Rules, my May 27 release. Over the past twelve novels, I’ve gotten pretty regimented about giving myself “deadlines” interspersed between my real, contractual deadlines. Two summers ago, I was driving home from dropping my son and his friends off at surf camp, when I heard a radio interview with two mothers about the “mommune” they had created, slang for “mom commune.”

I didn’t think much of it, mostly because it wasn’t the first time I’d heard about mommunes in the recent past. It started with a clip on Good Moring America that I thought was particularly interesting. Also, a few newspaper and magazine articles had come into my feed. Essentially, mothers were moving in together to raise their children, largely for financial concerns about the high cost of living but also because single parenting is, well, hard. I thought the idea was interesting.

But I hadn’t thought about it being a story I could write until that morning on the radio show when everything changed. A disgruntled woman called in to announce to the world—or at least the listeners of the radio show—that these mothers, who were just trying to get by, were doing something “unnatural” by teaming up to raise their families. 

I was surprised that someone would be so unkind to women who had worked so hard to get by, to take their lives back and create a productive and unique family that worked for themselves and their children. But, well, I wasn’t shocked. I grew up in a small southern town. I currently live in an even smaller southern town. And, let me tell you: If you don’t want someone to have an opinion about what you’re doing, that is not the right place for you to live. I say that with love because, honestly, I find the gossip that makes small town worlds turn kind of fascinating. But I couldn’t imagine someone walking up to someone and disparaging their life to their face.

I shook my head, walked inside, carried on. I was making my coffee, about to head upstairs to start writing for the day. But then I had the thought that would change everything: What would people in a small southern town say about a mommune? And how much of what they said would be rumor and how much would be true? It was a head-to-toe chills moment. I was going to write a book about a mommune!

Well, maybe. Potentially. First, I called my agent, who found the idea intriguing. Then I consulted my own “mommune,” the group of friends, mostly from out of town, whom I have lunch with almost every day during the summer while our kids play. (Well, now they “hang out.” They’re teens and preteens, after all!)

They loved the idea and, by the end of the day, we were using the term “mommune” in our conversations. I felt like if the idea could catch on with my friends, who exemplify a large part of my reading demographic, in the matter of an afternoon, I might just be on to something. 

The “Greek Chorus” aspect of the story was incredibly important to me, and, when I devised @junipershoressocialite, the anonymous gossip-grammer that narrates the story and becomes the voice of the people, that push-pull between public perception and fact came to life in a way that was exactly what I had hoped, in a way that is slightly more modern than the typical Southern “We’ll put her on the prayer list,” but, all the same, gives a fun and slightly non-serious tone I wanted. 

The idea for this book taught me something I thought I already knew: Inspiration can come from anywhere. And it doesn’t just have to be my imagination. It can be a news clip, a magazine article, or a woman who is disgruntled by the idea of anything changing. I get that. I really do. Change is hard. But, as the women in Beach House Rules learn, when you have the right friends by your side, sometimes the detour is where the magic happens. 

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author of eleven novels including A Happier Life, The Summer of Songbirds, and The Peachtree Bluff Series. Many of her books have been optioned or are in development for television and film and have received numerous accolades, including Good Morning America’s Buzz Pick, Southern Living’s Most Anticipated Reads, Katie Couric’s Featured Books, and Joanna Garcia Swisher’s The Happy Place Read. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize.

A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism, her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Southern Living, Parade, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, and many more. She also holds a master’s in English, with a concentration in multicultural and transnational literature.

Kristy is the cocreator and cohost of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction with fellow New York Times Bestselling authors Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, and Patti Callahan Henry. She is also the co-founder of the interiors site Design Chic, with her mom, Beth Woodson.

She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband, son, and dog, Salt, where she is (always!) working on her next novel.