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In my last entry I wrote about the language services that are known for their literary traditions at ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service headquarters Bush House.

The names of Qurrat-ul-Ain Haider, Momin Khan Momin, Obaid Siddiqui, Mohsena Jilani, Fahmida Riaz, Mohammed Hanif - all of whom have passed through the doors of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Urdu service - are well-known in the Urdu- and English-speaking literary worlds.

I also mentioned the name of Waheed Mirza - who is currently with the Urdu service and has just published the acclaimed novel The Collaborator.

"It is Kashmir in the early 1990s and war has finally reached the isolated village of Nowgam close to the Pakistan border.

"Indian soldiers appear as if from nowhere to hunt for militants on the run.

"Four teenage boys, who used to spend their afternoons playing cricket, or singing Bollywood ballads down by the river, have disappeared one by one, to cross into Pakistan and join the movement against the Indian army.

"Only one of their friends, the son of the headman, is left behind.

"He, under the brutal, drunken gaze of the Indian army captain, is seemingly forced to collaborate and go into the valley to count the corpses, fearing, each day, that he will discover one of his friends lying amongst the dead..." - so says the synopsis on the back of the book.

I digress here slightly...

Last week I attended a ´óÏó´«Ã½ masterclass, run by Adam Hochschild - an American writer of non-fiction.

He said that he is writing non-fiction because it doesn't restrict him.

Hochschild says that how ever unbelievable the reality is, the evidence always backs up his writing, but with fiction he is doomed to doubt himself: is this or that scenario plausible or not?

Waheed Mirza works as the Online Editor of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Urdu Service and by the very nature of his job as a journalist he writes extensively about Pakistan and Kashmir.

I asked him: what does fiction give you which journalism does not? He replies:

"There is no single reason why I chose fiction.

"Many things come to mind: you've been nursing writerly aspirations forever.

"You think you have something to say.

"Then your political baptism happens at home in Kashmir - a most intense political baptism, I must add.

"Then you've been waiting for the moment when you hit upon a voice.

"Added to all that is your work as a journalist, which, in it's short everyday news form is sometimes inadequate to tell complex stories such as Kashmir's.

"Fiction - I have always believed - allows for the greatest complexity and mystery; with the novelistic form, one can go anywhere.

"That is one of the reasons it has survived for so long.

"My career as a journalist has helped me to recognise the value of regular output.

"You need something on the page everyday, every week, to arrive at something substantial.

"In other ways, it's sometimes an impediment: You've just hit upon a terrific plot turn or thought of a great line, but then you've got to be at that important, and sometimes crushingly boring, meeting at work, or a big story has just broken.

"But then that's something which can be true of all careers, isn't it?"

I also told Waheed about our common project - writing a radio drama and asked him for his contribution, to inspire our thoughts.

He gave his plot the title The Pacifist:

It's about a separatist militant leader's long-drawn dilemma over his decision to give up arms.

"As a rather naive metaphor - and some kind of dramaturgical device - the play shows his Kalashnikov as an extension of his right arm.

"Unable to shake it off, he wants to cut it off but can't bring himself to do it as it hurts.

"Eventually he's surrounded by armed forces sent by the state to capture him.

"They are not interested in his complexities or his internal struggle which he tries to speak about through a megaphone.

"He is shot dead the moment he declares a surrender to become a pacifist.

"His dead body is then shown as a trophy on TV."

PS I'm aware that there were some problems with writing comments on the blog, which are fixed now. So if you were unsuccessful in your attempt to send your plot, please try now once again, it should work. I need more of your suggestions before we proceed further.

Some language services in the headquarters of ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service - Bush House - have particularly strong literary traditions.

I don't have to look far beyond my own Central Asian service to see several first-class poets and writers who have worked or are still working here.

Another service with a number of internationally-acclaimed writers is the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Urdu service.

Even if you don't remember the literary heritage of Qurrat-ul-Ain Haider or Obaid Siddiqui, over the last year or two you may have heard about the novels A Case of Exploded Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif or The Collaborator just published by Waheed Mirza.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian service is also one, which could be proud of its literary talent.

Zinoviy Zinnik and Nodar Jinn, Ravil Bukharaev and Andrei Ostalski and many others have all passed through its doors.

But the most legendary of all is the name of Seva Novgorodsev - who is still working for ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service.

When any visitor from the former Soviet Union comes to Bush House his or her first question - no matter how old they are - is usually: "Can I see Seva Novgorodtsev?"

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ magazine World Agenda described him:

With his trademark wavy locks and cool demeanour, it is evident why jazz musician and disc jockey Seva has achieved cult status in his native Russia.

The veteran broadcaster left the Soviet Union in 1975 and lived in Rome before coming to London in 1977, where he started as a translator and presenter at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian.

That same year he also took up a post presenting music programmes.

Since then, he has earned himself a steady fan base, which follows him around the world.

"In the summer of 1990, when I was able to travel for the first time in 13 or 14 years to Russia, I was met in Moscow by 800 people who blocked the airport completely and customs had to send me out the back door," says Seva.

"Since then we have kept meeting and, as the fans have grown up and made money, the whole thing has moved abroad, so we have had events in Paris, Prague and one in London too."

Before leaving the Soviet Union, Seva was a famous jazz and rock musician.

His joyful and jazzy journalism became a kind of a new literature.

Quotes from Seva became folkloric proverbs; texts of his programmes were published as entertaining books.

He even wrote a Russian cookbook for the British supermarket Sainbury's.

In 2005, he was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting.

As a top-class jazz-musician, Seva is still "playing on several radio instruments" - he does his beloved radio; he presents freaky videos; he interacts with his listeners.

Remembering that we are planning to write a radio drama together, (click here for details) I have chosen from his notes a subject, which could further inspire our common project.

Children in the Latvian capital Riga have been asked to come up with questions to ask God and some of the questions are here:

Can a childhood be enough for a lifetime?
You made flowers much better than people.
Dearest God, did You put into me my soul or someone's else?
Why when you fall in love, you like everything, even scrambled eggs?
I'm still small, have no sins, though they are coming up.
In what languages the souls speak to each other?

In the last week, I have been invited to go to a couple of awards ceremonies - the Sony Radio awards and the One World Media awards.

There I had a chance to see - or rather to hear - for myself the kind of radio that is making the greatest impact.

Breaking news and political reports from the world's hot spots are as important as ever, but the lives of ordinary people across the planet told by a compassionate voice are valued not just by the juries of awards ceremonies, but also by millions of listeners.

Stories such as Dancing Boys of Afghanistan - made by my colleague Rustam Qobil - got the recognition it deserved and was awarded Bronze and Silver prizes at those ceremonies.

Nothing is more inspiring than witnessing excellence.

Other accolades went to ´óÏó´«Ã½ drama productions including Every Child Matters and Murder in Samarkand, which got me thinking about you - my friends and audience around the world.

Why - I thought - don't we write a radio drama together?

We have written together a short story, an ode, even a newspaper of dreams, so why not the radio drama?

But before outlining our project in more detail, let me introduce you to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom.

They describe themselves thus: "´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom is always on the lookout for fresh, new, talented writers for a changing Britain.

"When we find them, we do everything we can to get their voice heard and their work produced for ´óÏó´«Ã½ film, TV and radio - for drama, comedy, and children's programmes.

"If you have talent, an original voice, and stories to tell, then ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom wants to know about you."

Let's forget for a moment the bit about Britain and let's open it up to a wider audience.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom gives some tips how to write different genres.

Have a look at the writing radio drama tips. See what you think.

What I want you to do next is to post below:

1) a location - bear in mind that we need to aim for something that is universal - that all nations share - which is common to all of us (village, town, airport, ship, coach, etc)

2) an event/ or "conflict" - again, this situation should be universal and should be understood from Nigeria to New Zealand;

3) main conflicting characters - there should be no more than three

4) a resolution - or how the "conflict"/situation is resolved

5) a sample of dialogue from any part of the drama.

We'll aim to write together a radio drama, which we can pass on to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom.

Let's try to impress them, so that one day perhaps our drama may be played out on the airwaves of the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

In the early Spring of 2003 I was allowed to visit several prisons in Uzbekistan to interview the most famous political prisoners including writer Mamadali Mahmudov and the religious figure Zayniddin Askarov.

I made several radio programmes about the visits in Uzbek, but I never wrote up a "straight" account of what I saw there.

Instead I wrote a novella called Googling for Soul which tells the story of my trip to the most notorious of all those prisons - Jaslyk prison, which is nicknamed Barsa-Kelmes or a Place of No Return.

What made me write a fictional piece about the trip? A more general question to consider is why does man write fiction?

When I started to deconstruct the issue, there were some pretty obvious answers, which came to my mind.

Naturally I thought about the safety of those people whom I met both in prisons and on my way there.

I couldn't disclose everything: any little hint could have compromised their well being.

On the other hand there was an element of a natural hypocrisy, too.

I couldn't tell the state or prison officials what I thought of them and the conditions of the prisoners.

There was quite a lot of a mandatory politics and diplomacy.

On reflection, it seemed to me that I need some time to make sense of that trip.

There were deeper reasons for choosing fiction to journalism too.

Before discussing them I'll demonstrate with a metaphor.

Last week I was watching the world snooker championships.

In the game of snooker - like pool - if you hit the every ball perfectly straight on you would never win a frame.

The skill is in being able to cue, to spin, to measure the strength of the strike, to take into consideration the position of other balls and also keep in mind the safety of your shots.

I think that this is a good metaphor for writing fiction versus a straightforward account of the "reality".

Above I mentioned making sense of the reality.

It seems that actual reality tries to allude us and we are always trying to make sense of a situation: why did he/she say these words, why did the crowd behave in a such manner, why does a newspaper lead with a particular story?

Why, why, why???

On the other hand, there are schools of literature, like the French "new novel", which doesn't look into the sense behind the reality, but examines the atomic facts of that reality bit by bit.

But we are doomed to believe that even the absence of sense is a sense in itself.

So literature brings meaning into this indifferent reality.

It traps that reality before it escapes.

When you look at the cue of snooker players Ronnie O'Sullivan or John Higgins it never points directly at the hole, but they strike and ultimately the ball ends up in the net.

Writers have also in their hands all kind of tricks and techniques to make the sense of the reality they describe even more real than the reality itself.

There are prisons everywhere all over the world, so to tell the story of one of them wouldn't make an impact, but when you try to show that in some situations living in "liberty" could be even worse than in the most notorious prison, it conveys something that only literature can tell.