The Art of Transportation

Back in the days when I first thought of writing a novel, I had visions of working in a grand author’s study, a large square room with book-lined walls, an elegant Victorian hearth, sweeping views across the Wessex heath. There I would be at my most inspired, conjuring bold and evocative scenes to the sound of crackling oak-logs in the fireplace, the wind gusting and sighing about the eaves of the house.

Fast forward a few years, and I find myself not in rural Dorsetshire, but on the 6:30 AM to Hoboken with a warm laptop open on my knee. This, of all places, is where I do much of my writing these days. Some ironic person once sent me a little book on feng shui for writers, but its advice on floral arrangements and watery sound effects is scarcely applicable to the interior space of this crowded train car. Instead, I am obliged to absorb the literary yin and yang of a fake leather bench seat and a grime-windowed view of industrial New Jersey passing by, derelict warehouses silhouetted against the glowing easterly sky.

The morning’s writing goals are clear enough. In my novel “Finding Camlann,” I am striving to establish a strong sense of place, to carry my readers off to a richly imagined British landscape. The scene I am trying to write has my protagonist, Donald Gladstone, walking across an English greensward decked with ancient ruins, musing on the origins of the King Arthur stories. The conductor’s strident announcement meanwhile informs me that we are approaching Newark Broad Street station, where passengers bound for New York must change trains. The sharp-eyed fellow sitting next to me takes a call on his cell phone, confidently asserting his position on some complex issue of probate law.

How, in such challenging surroundings, to accomplish the necessary feat of imaginative transference? First, I do not allow myself to despair; I know from past experience that it can be done. Then, as I begin to feel a prickling sixth sense that someone is watching me, I tell myself this: in the same way that my travelling companion does not care if I overhear his important lawyerly conversation, it’s perfectly fine if he wants to read over my shoulder. Have at it, my friend. Just don’t try to correct my grammar.

Stifling a yawn, I try to force my way past my gritty-eyed morning tiredness. There is a positive aspect to this partially somnolent state of mind, or so I like to think. I have become convinced over the years that exhaustion can promote a special kind of disconnected inventiveness. While sleep deprivation may not be conducive to analytical tasks (let’s say, stress testing the financial model I’ve been working on for my day job), I know by now that the cognitive space occupied by my creative mind is so very distant from the spreadsheet part that it can be wide awake while the other is fast asleep.

Now I just need to shock this artistic region of my brain into full alertness by launching myself assertively into the world of my novel. I am instantly immersed, side by side with Donald as he strides across the dew-damp grass, the jagged remnants of Glastonbury Abbey rising up before him. He happens upon an aged gardener in a patched tweed jacket wielding a pair of rusty clippers on a twisted old thorn tree. As the old man prunes expertly away at last year’s dead wood, he looks up at Donald with a gap-toothed conspiratorial smile.

“Hoboken, final stop,” comes the brash declaration. I am the last passenger to leave, typing frantically to capture one more sentence before I lose the flow. The conductor comes by, taps me on the shoulder. I want to ask him whether I might stay here a little while longer, maybe ride the train back home again.