The short version is nearly thirty years, and the long version is more interesting. Lee carried the idea from a college lecture in 1989 all the way to publication in 2017, and she scrapped years of work along the way.
The Idea That Wouldn't Leave (1989)
In 1989, Lee was a senior in college when she sat in on a talk by a missionary who worked with Koreans in Japan. One detail wouldn't let go of her. He described a Korean-Japanese boy who was bullied for years and died by suicide at thirteen. Lee has said that story lodged itself in her consciousness and eventually pushed her to write about the experience of Koreans in Japan. She was in her early twenties then. The book that grew out of that afternoon wouldn't reach readers until she was in her late forties.
False Starts and a Discarded Draft
Lee left the law in 1995 and had started writing fiction about Koreans in Japan by around 1996. A short story tied to the material, Motherland, ran in The Missouri Review in 2002 and won the Peden Prize. Behind the scenes she was grinding on a longer manuscript, one she worked on for roughly seven years before setting it aside. Her debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, came out in 2007 and took its own several years. The Japan book kept getting pushed down the list.
I have had this book with me for almost 30 years.
Min Jin Lee, Chicago Review of Books, 2016
Moving to Japan and Starting Over
In 2007 Lee moved to Tokyo with her family, and living there changed everything. Sitting down with Korean-Japanese people and hearing how they actually talked about their lives, she realized she'd gotten the story wrong and threw out her draft. She began the book again in 2008 and kept writing and revising it until the manuscript sold in 2015. Pachinko was published in February 2017, became a National Book Award finalist, and later a television series. Counting from that 1989 lecture, she'd carried it for almost thirty years. For how she actually spends a writing day, see the full Min Jin Lee writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Let a big idea simmer. The story that won't leave you alone is usually the one worth years.
- Kill a draft when it's wrong. Lee set aside roughly seven years of work rather than force it.
- Go to the source. Living in Tokyo and interviewing people reshaped the whole book.
- Measure progress in decades when you have to. Some books simply take as long as they take.