I write, therefore I am (a writer)

There is something quietly unnerving about being asked to write about yourself as a writer.

Not because there is nothing to say, but because suddenly every sentence feels like a performance. You become aware, in a way you are not when writing anything else, that you are being read as a writer. Even the simplest statement: I am a student, I write poetry, I am interested in language; begins to carry a strange weight. You want it to sound right. You want it to sound like it belongs.

And so, the instinct is to reach for something more polished, more lyrical, more “writerly.” To prove, perhaps, that you deserve the title.

I am trying not to do that.

I am currently completing a work placement with the Scottish BPOC Writers Network as part of my third year studying Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the Highlands and Islands. That is the official version.

The less official version is that I am someone who spent a long time hesitating before calling herself a writer.

For a while, writing felt like something that existed just outside of me. I could analyse texts, talk about structure and voice and imagery, situate a poem within a tradition. But to claim writing as something I did felt different. It felt like stepping into a space that required permission.

I am beginning to understand that permission is rarely given. I have to take it, I have to make it happen. Perhaps that is why my interests feel so wide at the moment, because I am no longer interested in being careful.

I write poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. I move between languages, English, Spanish, Portuguese; not always cleanly, not always with a clear intention; but with a sense that each language offers a different way of seeing. I am drawn to questions of identity, inheritance, and place, but also to whatever happens to catch my attention on a given day.

For a long time, I thought that to be a “serious” writer, I would need to specialise. To choose a genre, a voice, a direction. Now, I am more interested in curiosity than certainty. There is something liberating in allowing yourself to try. To write something that may not work, to follow an idea without knowing where it will lead, to write outside of what feels familiar or expected. It feels, in a small way, like reclaiming time that was spent hesitating.

Studying literature has shaped the way I think about writing, but not always in the ways I expected. It has taught me how to read closely, to notice the weight of a single word, the rhythm of a sentence, the way meaning can shift through form. It has given me a vocabulary for understanding texts, but it has also made me more aware of how difficult writing is, how much thought sits beneath something that appears effortless.

At times, that awareness can feel paralysing. When you understand how a text works, you also become aware of everything your own writing is not yet doing. But it can also be a source of confidence. Because if writing is something that can be studied, then it is also something that can be learned, practised, and developed over time. It becomes less of a mystery, and more of a craft.

As part of my placement with the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, I have begun to think more about writing not only as an individual practice, but as something that exists within a community. Writing can often feel solitary, but it does not exist in isolation. It is shaped by the spaces we are part of, the voices we encounter, and the opportunities we are given or denied. Being part of a network like SBWN highlights the importance of those structures, particularly for writers who may not always see themselves reflected in the literary world. Representation is often spoken about in abstract terms, but in practice it can be something very simple: seeing someone whose work makes you think, this is possible. Or being in a space where writing is not treated as something distant or inaccessible, but as something lived and shared.

At the moment, I am working on a number of projects, though I am still learning how to talk about them without fixing them too early in place. What interests me most is the act of writing itself, the way it allows us to hold onto things, to examine them, to reshape them. Writing can preserve, but it can also transform. It is never a neutral act. Perhaps that is why writing about oneself feels so complicated; because the moment you put yourself into language, you begin to shape the version that will be read by others. 

So, this piece of writing in itself is – in some ways- a small contradiction, because it attempts not to perform, while knowing that it inevitably is a performance. 

Perhaps that is part of the work too, not to avoid that tension, but to become aware of it.

To write anyway.