So… what do you write? It sounds simple. Supposed to be. A genre, a label, something clean enough to fit into a sentence that other people can immediately understand. But every time I try to answer it, it feels like I’m choosing which version of myself gets to exist publicly and which ones don’t.
I’ve always been indecisive.
The industry would like you to decide already
There’s an unspoken expectation that by the time you start taking your writing seriously, you should already know what lane you’re in. Romance writers stay in romance. Thriller writers build tension on command. Literary writers… well, they suffer in a very specific font.
Consistency is marketable. Predictability is comfortable. Readers like knowing what they’re getting, and the industry likes knowing how to sell you. You’re supposed to build a brand. A recognizable voice. A clear identity that can be summarized in a few keywords and maybe a color palette.
And I get it. I really do. But something about that feels like being asked to choose a single emotion and live there permanently.
Sorry, I keep changing my mind!
One day, I want to write something soft and romantic, the kind of story that lingers in small gestures and almost-confessions. The next, I want to write something unsettling. Something that leans into discomfort, into the parts of human nature people would rather not look at too closely. Sometimes I want poetry that feels like a wound. Sometimes I want dialogue that moves fast. Sometimes I want something structured, and sometimes I want to break structure entirely just to see what happens.
It’s not confusion in the way people assume. It’s curiosity. But curiosity doesn’t package well.
Writing as exploration
I didn’t start writing because I had a brand in mind. I started writing because there were too many things I didn’t understand about people, about myself, about the way emotions can contradict themselves and still be true.
Different genres let me ask different questions. Romance lets me explore connection and vulnerability. Darker narratives let me examine control, fear, and the edges of morality. Poetry lets me say things I don’t fully know how to explain yet. So staying in one would mean choosing which questions are worth asking. And I’m not willing to do that.
Is the author really that important?
There’s also this idea that destabilizes the whole “define yourself clearly” expectation: Roland Barthes and his essay “The Death of the Author”.
Barthes argues that once a text exists, the author’s intentions stop being the ultimate authority. Meaning isn’t fixed by what the writer meant — it’s created by the reader, shaped by their own experiences, their own interpretations, and their own context. In other words, the writer isn’t the final voice in the conversation.
Which makes the pressure to define yourself so precisely feel… a little misplaced. If readers are the ones ultimately constructing meaning, then what matters isn’t whether I stay in one genre or maintain a perfectly consistent identity. What matters is whether the work gives them something to interpret, to feel, to argue with.
My version of success
There’s a version of success that looks very clear from the outside: a defined audience, a consistent output, a recognizable name attached to a specific type of work.
And then there’s the version I keep circling back to. I don’t just want to be known. I want to be felt. I want someone to pick up something I’ve written — whether it’s a novel, a poem, or something in between — and recognize a piece of themselves they didn’t have language for before. I want range. Not for the sake of proving something, but because we are not one-dimensional, and neither is what we create.
If I limit myself too early, I’d be simplifying everything I’m trying to understand.
But I get it, there’s something uncomfortable about not having a fixed identity as a writer. It makes introductions harder. It makes marketing messier. It makes everything feel a little less stable. But it also keeps the work alive. The moment I fully define what kind of writer I am, I risk turning it into a boundary instead of a possibility. And I want movement. I want contradiction. I want the freedom to write something that doesn’t sound like the last thing I wrote, without feeling like I’ve betrayed some invisible contract.
We’ll see
Maybe one day it will settle. Maybe I’ll naturally gravitate toward one genre, one tone, one way of telling stories that feels like home. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll keep shifting, keep experimenting, keep writing things that don’t quite belong together, except that they came from me.
— Montse
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