Have spent the last few days writing something for this Radio 4 series, 'From Fact To Fiction'. It airs on Saturday at 7pm, if you're interested. Alistair MacGowan is narrating it.

The premise is a cool one: to take a running news story and use it as the basis for a piece of fiction that you write throughout the week. I'm almost done now. We record tomorrow morning.

It's been an interesting process, but I've found it pretty demanding and it's certainly reminded me why I don't do much journalism any more - the deadlines. Nonetheless, there is a certain ineffable purity to this kind of writing to order; something around the lack of room to be precious, let alone precise. Most days when writing I'm battling with myself to locate that place where the work just flows. But, with an immutable deadline, the place usually finds me. Except when it doesn't. And that's the only problem.

Still, a week like this makes me think, not for the first time, that writers' block is more or less an indulgence. Unfortunately, this realisation has never helped me stop indulging.