Jonathan Lee

Published June 30, 2010 | By Laura

Jonathan Lee is an English author. Who is Mr Satoshi? is his debut novel. We had a chat with Jonathan to find out a little about him and his novel, as well as his writing habits…..

Have you always wanted to write?

I spent quite a long time wanting to be a writer. The only thing I wasn’t so keen on was the actual writing. It’s a bit like that Mark Twain quote about a ‘classic’ book being something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. I wanted to skip the pencil buying, back ache and paper cuts and have the finished novel in my hands. When I got to university I started penning terrible autobiographical bits and pieces, but I was too preoccupied with other things to have a serious stab at developing any kind of craft. I did a lot of reading, though. With hindsight, that helped me learn some of the tricks a novelist needs.

What was your route to publication?

I’m 29 now. When I was around 25 I had a kind of quarter-life crisis. It wasn’t anything particularly dramatic. I didn’t buy a Porche or run off with anyone inappropriate. But I was sitting in an office in the City all day, wolfing down soggy sandwiches at my desk, and I realised that I hadn’t made any inroads into this niggling ambition of mine, this desire to be a writer. So I started to write more seriously. And then a twenty-something friend of mine published a novel and it did well. The sense of envy probably gave me the final push I needed. I ended up taking six months off work to write full-time. At the end of that period I sent the first three chapters off to a few literary agents, and I was fortunate that Clare Alexander liked what I had sent. We worked together on getting the full manuscript into shape and, a few months later, Jason Arthur called and offered me a two book deal with Random House. I’m skipping over the rejections and the days when things seemed genuinely bleak, but the truth is it all happened very quickly and I was lucky in all sorts of ways.

Briefly describe what your debut novel ‘‘Who is Mr Satoshi?’ is about

The main character is an artistic recluse. He has come adrift from the world. When his mother dies, he finds among her belongings a parcel addressed to a man called Mr Satoshi. He’s at a difficult juncture in his life, and the more he looks at this dusty old parcel, the more he starts to toy with the idea of travelling to Japan to try and deliver it. It’s a small everyday thing – a box wrapped in brown paper and string – but it begins to offer him some sense of direction.

How did you approach the planning process when beginning ‘Who is Mr Satoshi?’

I wish I was a planner, it would make the process easier. I have a vague idea of where I’m going and I stop every now and again to give some thought to plot and structure. It leads to wastage: I throw away about half of what I write.

Describe your typical writing day?

When I have a full day to devote to writing I start early, around 7am. I try to plough on with as few interruptions as possible until around 3pm, by which point I’m caffeine-poisoned, dog-tired and incapable of basic human interaction. I go to the gym, grunt at the reception staff, drag my knuckles around for an hour or so and emerge from the changing rooms feeling vaguely human again. Then I’ll read for a bit or tinker with a paragraph or two. I never do any writing in the evening.

How do you approach editing?

I love editing. Re-writing is so much more fun than writing. I think that a common misconception is that the book you are reading on the train or the bus somehow emerged fully formed from the writer’s mind. I can’t speak for writers as a whole but I’d be surprised if that’s the case for many of them. I edit, edit, and then edit again. It’s a tricky thing, getting the shape and cadence of a sentence right, let alone a whole novel. I don’t think there’s a single line in Who Is Mr Satoshi? that I didn’t re-write fifteen times. Now the text is what you might call ‘final’, it’s painful for me to read. I keep wanting to move the commas around and I can’t. Next time you see an author do a reading, peer over their shoulder at the book in their hands: there’s often pencil marks all over the page, corrections and improvements scribbled five minutes before they address their audience. Writers are obsessive types; it’s hard to let go of the thing you’ve written.

Where do you find inspiration for your writing?

There’s a Somerset Maugham line which I’m fond of boring people with: “I write only when inspiration strikes, and fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” If I spend enough time staring at a blank page, I trust that a snippet of something will come. Then it’s a case of building on that snippet in a disciplined way, layer by layer, until you have something that interests you.

Is there an author you especially admire?

I’m going through a John Updike phase at the moment. He is brilliantly attentive to the physical detail of things. He has a forensic eye for flowers, castles, windscreen-wipers. It helps that he seems to know about everything. Philosophy, the financial markets, painting, astro-physics. He brings it all alive.

Is there a book by another author that you wished you’d written?

Usually it’s a particular sentence or idea that I wish I’d come up with, rather than a whole book. There’s a short story collection I really like called You’re An Animal, Viskovitz! by Alessandro Boffa. That has lots of great ideas and sentences. In each story, Viscovitz is a different animal. One minute he’s a love-struck cuckoo, the next he’s a chameleon suffering from an identity crisis. It’s a funny, poignant, playful book that deserves a wider readership.

Your five tips for new writers.

1. Everyone’s first draft is awful.

2. Keep reading.

3. Keep re-writing.

4. Don’t underestimate the importance of a comfortable chair.

5. Be wary of tips and rules, particularly from first-time authors.

For more information on Jonathan, take a look at his website: www.jonathan-lee.net