We are pleased to welcome Joe Wilson to the blog as part of his blog tour for his debut novel, The Island that Didn't Exist a compelling  adventure story with a conservation theme.  Here Joe discusses finding a nest, the space and time, in which to write.  

I’ve just been watching Roald Dahl in his little hut. Have you seen it? You might even have visited it. It was 1982 when I joined him there, this morning, on YouTube. In the BBC film Roald Dahl explains his routine and demonstrates his writing environment. It is eccentric, idiosyncratic and utterly charming, of course it is. In short, it runs like this:

Dahl walks to his hut, which is located at the end of a short garden path. He sits in a specially configured armchair and pulls the rug up over his knees (in winter he, tells us, he sits inside a full sleeping bag). Having lowered a special writing tray to rest on the arms of the chair he then sharpens six pencils with an electronic device. There are always six, he stresses, and they must all be sharp before he proceeds. He then pours something from a flask and he’s ready to write. He’s created, as he puts it, his nest.

I think to myself, ‘how wonderful’ immediately followed by, ‘how utterly unattainable’. I would love an author’s nest. In reality I often struggle to find a perch.

I’m in awe of anyone who decides to dispense with their everyday life completely and immerse themselves solely in writing their first novel. I, in contrast, tried to fit mine in around everything else. In that way, I suspect I’m like a lot of other new authors.

The time and space I found to write The Island That Didn’t Exist was normally the train; commuter with computer. That was me. It may be you, too. So, here this the benefit of my experience; the trials and travails of writing on the rails.

• Find a seat. Sitting down may seem like the fundamental right of the train traveller but on my line, like many others, it was more of a luxury. The only guarantee of getting a seat was to take a slow service. This involved arriving at the station earlier than necessary to allow for the extra stops the train would take on its route to London. Sometimes there was no choice, it had to be the quickest and so (market forces demanded) the most crowded. There is something rather humiliating about crouching cross legged on the floor with your nose sniffing the bin having bought an expensive ticket for the privilege. In these moments, I must confess, the creative headspace to write was difficult to locate. There is, of course, no excuse. But I am suggesting this comes close.
• Don’t miss your stop. The dream scenario of train writing is when the pattern of your mind blends with the rhythm of rails. You become one with the movement of the train. There is a kind of creative harmony the Buddhists probably have a name for. You are only vaguely aware, in fact, that the train has actually come to a halt. Panic hits you when you recognise the platform as belonging to your station. From that point there are approximately 15 seconds to save your work, stuff the laptop in the bag, grab whatever additional possessions you’ve strewn near you, climb apologetically over the adjacent passenger and dash through the doors. In this heightened state I have lost two scarves and one coat but, thankfully, I never lost what I’d just been writing.
• Rail Replacement Service. The three dreaded words. A late shift in the office always carried with it the potential that engineering works would render the lines out of service. A train would transport you beyond the outer fringes of the capital but no further. What came next was a wait in a windswept car park, standing silently with a few other helpless souls. Eventually we would all mournfully parade on to a coach as the clocks (on our phones) ticked past midnight. I’ve never liked reading on coaches and writing is even harder. But I now wonder if the cramped darkness and overpowering sense of nausea contributed to the script. The scene where Rixon Webster is trapped in a cave, partially written on a rail replacement service, is the only part of the book which survived unscathed through the whole redrafting process.

The purpose of this blog is not to complain, far from it. The whole point is that writing escapist adventure fiction was my own way of escaping the commuting routine. If I had to be there in body I didn’t have to be there in mind. That, I think, leads to the broader purpose of a book.

When you’ve got a good one you carry it with you like a treasure. It is somewhere to travel to, to be thrilled by and to feel safe inside. In fact, long after the writers have ceased their labour the book itself becomes a kind of portable nest.