When I’m cooped up in a city centre I often yearn to go to place out in the wilds to get some work done. It’s especially the case when I’m a on particularly unproductive run.

It seems like a panacea. If only I was in some rough-hewn log cabin in Poland’s Tatra mountains I could probably bash out a book in a week. Maybe two books, even.

Yet when I finally did get to that kind of place, I found it didn’t work for me the way I expected.

I happened on the perfect (or rather ‘perfect’) writer’s re...