After studying English at Coventry University, Nelson found himself back in south-east London, “floating”, as he describes it. Working part-time jobs, he spent whatever free time he could find in the space between, diligently writing. Two years were spent trying and failing to find an agent. “It was either silence, or like, ‘I love your work, but there’s no place for it in the market’,” he says. His now agent, however, responded within 20 minutes, suggesting he work the essays he had pitched into a novel, which became Open Water.