‘For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live’

It’s always the same.

“What are you studying at university?”

“Oh, I do creative writing.”

“Oh…. Creative writing, that… that’s cool.” When really they’re just wondering if that’s an actual degree.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. It started off as something my sister would do and I used to copy because that’s what I did – my sister would do something, so I’d have to do it too. My mum would make us hand-made books, pieces of paper stapled together and put in a box labelled Lauren and Charlie’s Stories. We’d write about Jemima the pirate and Flipper the dolphin and Soot the dog. And then when my sister grew out of it and moved on to other things, I stayed with the hand-made books. And then notebooks. And then a five-page Word document. And then a 39,000 word novel.

The longest I’ve ever stayed in one place is six years. I’ve been to four different schools and five different countries. I once told someone I’m more rehearsed with goodbyes than hello’s, and I’m an expert at packing boxes. I live the “expat-life”: the living proof of someone who panics when having to fill in the “permanent address” form. I have an accent that doesn’t correspond with my nationality and I find myself comparing the taste of drinking water because I’ve moved around so much. I’m what they call a “third-culture kid”, a term used to describe the kids who were raised in a culture different to their own.

Theodor Adorno’s quote says it all. Because I moved around so much it made it difficult to call one place home. Theodor said: “For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.”

As cliché as it sounds, I find it so much easier to write. It’s as if it makes more sense when it’s a medley of adjectives and verbs and nouns. Having the opportunity to travel so much has given me with a different insight to how I see things – I’ve met some incredible people over the years and seen some amazing things. And the only way I know how to express it all is through my writing.

When people ask me why I write I say I write because it’s the only thing I know how.

 

Written by Charlotte Porter