So I spent last week at Arvon centre the Hurst, in Shropshire, on a short story course. I'd really recommend going on something like this if you're interested in writing; the access you get to the tutors is excellent.

You're essentially there for four days. We had four three-hour workshops, two one-on-one tutorials (with Adam Thorpe and Olive Senior) and then readings in the evenings. Di Speirs, one of Radio 4's senior fiction producers, and the person instrumental in founding the BBC's famous short story award, also came down to answer questions.

I've also just been appointed The Independent's arts reporter/correspondent (not sure on the title as yet), so I'm going to be the point of contact for arts news at the newspaper for the forseeable. It's exciting, because we're also launching a new title aimed at young/lapsed newspaper readers imminently.

Here's my review of Geoff Dyer's essays, a book I couldn't recommend highly enough.

Finished "The Interpretation of Dreams" and this book on Riker's Island which was more interesting than I had initially reckoned, as well as picking through Adam Thorpe's short stories, Ballard's short stories, and Raymond Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" mainly because he was name-dropped by Yannis Philippakis in this month's Q. Also enjoying Geoff Dyer's essays. The following, a Jung quotation, stood out, among others, in Dyer's piece on "Tender is the Night".

"The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing...He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths...The only meaningful life...is...a life that strives for the individual realisation - absolute and unconditional - of its own peculiar law...To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his own being...he has failed to realise his life's meaning."

Wrote some things on Nick Cave, animal pyschology and a couple of historical documentaries.