Kim Mullin
asked
Susan Vreeland:
How do you come up with your ideas and how long does it take you on average to write a book?
Susan Vreeland
Various ways. I have come upon an idea by looking at paintings in a museum, imagining the stories behind the artwork. If the painting involves figures, I speculate about their lives. If the models were real people, I do research in art books to learn about them. By looking through a book of Vermeer paintings that lay open in the gift shop of the L.A. County Museum of Art, I became interested in the paintings of Dutch women. Since my heritage is Dutch, I thought that perhaps my ancestors looked like them. Lisette's List came to me by visiting a village in Provence, Roussillon, becoming captivated with it and learning about it. [More on Lisette's List in other questions.] Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century Baroque painter, was suggested to me by a colleague, an art history teacher. I became interested in Emily Carr in a gallery in Victoria British Columbia. I had never heard of her before and was fascinated by her fierce independence. The story, "Of these Stones" grew from a single sentence in Rainer Marie Rilke's Letters on Cézanne in which he reported that gangs of boys threw stones at Cézanne and his painting on an easel. Including the research, for me a book takes three years, sometimes longer as it did with Lisette's List and The Forest Lover.
More Answered Questions
A Goodreads user
asked
Susan Vreeland:
Can you remember the first time that a piece of art really grabbed a hold of you? What was that like and do you recall what piece (or artist) it was?
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more