The Claude Glass deals with the relationship between two boys growing up on the Welsh borders: Robin, eldest son of hippy farmers, and Andrew, whose father feeds him on scraps under the table with the dogs. The "Claude glass" is a small 18th-century convex mirror, designed to reflect a picturesque, idealised impression of a landscape that Andrew discovers in his family's farmhouse. He's been answering a few questions about his work:

When and why did you start writing?

In earnest, when I was twenty-two - when I left university and there was nobody telling me what to do any more. But I've been writing all along, really. I received a certificate from the Post Office when I was seven for a story about a boy trapped in a crater on the moon, trying to persuade an alien to let him out.

How does Wales affect your work?

The landscape is the crucial thing; the landscape and the response it inspires in people. I grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire and the stark drama of the hills provides the tone and the backdrop to a lot of my work. Hill farming was a theme in The Claude Glass. Recently, I've been writing a lot about Welsh churches, which were often built in places intended to inspire a sense of wonder.

Do you see yourself as following in the tradition of the Romantic writers of the 18th century 19th century, especially with the importance of the Claude glass and the Wordsworth family in the book?

No, not really. I suppose I have certain Romantic instincts, but, apart from anything else, I think that if you follow a tradition you risk being constrained by it.

You have said that 'Unfashionably, I am one of these people who thinks that a certain amount of certain drugs is not merely good for you but positively essential'.

I was thinking specifically of magic mushrooms when I said that. As a teenager in the Welsh borders, when you weren't allowed into pubs yet and the hills were covered in complimentary psychedelics... Well. Like everyone else I knew, I took mushrooms excessively. Have these experiences helped me as an artist? Yes, they have. They helped me to understand how people create their own reality, and if you're writing a character like Andrew in The Claude Glass - a borderline feral child, who lacks the mental structures that other people take for granted - that understanding is vital. But of course that's the result of years of thinking about it all. Like any other experience, you digest it and it becomes part of who you are.

...and has writing now replaced the need for taking drugs?

Well, I suppose you could say that I now do my exploring through writing. But the fact I'm allowed into pubs helps too.

You say that you had written two manuscripts but had never before written when you had a moment of epiphany about writing. Can you explain what you mean by this?

Writing is a very instinctive business - something that happens to you as the result of a lot of thinking and fiddling with ideas that excite you. The best analogy is probably with sex. You know when you first write very much like you know when you have your first orgasm. You might have been nosing in that direction for some time, but there's no mistaking the real thing.

Russell Hoban has said that 'A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action.' Where do you stand on plotting a novel in the light of comparing The Claude Glass with your first novel, A?

The Claude Glass, I know, is a much more accomplished novel than A, which I wrote when I was twenty-four, twenty-five. In A, unfortunately, I think the plot obscures the substance of the book - although obviously I didn't understand that at the time. The Claude Glass is more like a delicate picture. Of course, Russell Hoban is right to say that a story reduces its events to their essential components. It removes the irrelevant, the bulk of the detail, to make its point. For me, the challenge is to make those components as rich and surprising as possible.

What advice would you give to budding writers?

Work obsessively. Don't be too proud to accept criticism. And above all, always stay true to what excites you.

What are your plans for the future/ next work?

I've written and discarded so much material over the past couple of years that sometimes it can be hard to tell, but I would like to write a novel imagining the life of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian schoolteacher of the late 19th century who developed all of the principles of space flight in near-total isolation. He had a furious desire to overcome the 'shackles' of gravity, and liked to sail up and down the frozen Protva River on an armchair fitted with skates.

Q and A with Tom Bullough