Writing and reading

I don't know about March "coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb"; with only four days left of the month, today started bitterly cold, then this afternoon we've had a mixture of thunderstorms and hail. The spring that Sunday promised appears to have gone AWOL .... 

March has actually flown past, with a lot of time spent on editing (which is, I think, the real hard work of writing!) and more research for my next book. I've also been trying to catch up on my reading list. I'm having a year of concentrating on Welsh authors and books about Wales. Although my Welsh is slowly improving, I'm afraid I still have to read most original texts in translation, but I'm enjoying the "greats", such as Saunders Lewis, immensely anyway. Currently I'm reading The Edge of Cymru by Julie Brominicks, another Welsh learner - it's part travelogue (describing her walk around the edges of Wales) and part discussion of the environmental issues particularly affecting our countryside. It's beautifully written and very thought-provoking, a good read.

I've also been reading Addlands by Tom Bullough, who tutored me at Ty Newydd a few years ago. It's a story about a mid twentieth century Radnorshire family, and - as a son of Radnorshire - Tom captures the landscape, the dialect and the life choices that had to be made brilliantly. Some time ago I remember being caught up in a debate about "writing what you know" and "writing what you imagine". To me the authenticity of the author's voice is paramount. The imagined may well have a vital role, woven into the tapestry of a story, but when a setting is a real place with a real history its presentation by an "insider" who knows the bones of it makes the world of difference.