Where are you from? What have you read? How does this impact upon your writing life?

I am certainly not from the same place as John Cheever, or Emily Dickinson, and I have not read what a typical English lecturer would have expected of me.

White, middle class, supportive upbringing where my fancies were indulged. I never really questioned myself until puberty where the typical stream of depression and anxiety washed over me, recently giving way to my present state of moderate bitterness (you could say I've blossomed into a full Englishman).

I haven't been repressed because of my gender, (like Dickinson) and I haven't had any trouble with my sexuality (like Cheever). In fact, I haven't had much of what some might call 'genuine hardship'. But I have experienced something which has deeply troubled me, and indeed many people my age and beyond: a lack of agency.

In this society of bureaucracy and hidden strings, it is hard for people to think that their actions really matter. Even when it's clear what one has to do, it is muddled by over-thinking busy-bodies, and needlessly complex systems imposed by others.

It is because of this that I find solace in writings which concern people with the power of agency. I read about worlds with simple agendas, or worlds that have been cluttered by society, and are made neat again by straightforward solutions, such as in the Conan stories where malicious plots and backstabbing are ended through barbarian steel and simple self confidence. I read about characters discovering what they can do, what they can't do, and why that's nothing to be ashamed of.

I read from those that revere the path without pretence, and I write for those that think they can't, but don't realise they can.

If you write, you're a writer, aren't you?

Not necessarily.

If we simply called anyone who forms words out of letters a "writer", then everyone from the person who writes health and safety warnings to the chav texting on the bus would be called a writer.

We only call people such as scriptwriters, novelists and poets writers, even if they aren't the only ones who put word to paper. Ergo there has to be a specific quality that the act of putting words to paper has to possess in order to be called "writing", which must be encompassed by the subject performing the action for them to be called a "writer".
As far as I can tell from my experience of the above examples, a piece of writing must be used as an either an examination or expression of the internal. Simply stating what is is not enough, writing must look into the spiritual aspect of all things. The drive behind an action, the subjective beauty of a season, all must be examined. A news reporter might simply be trying to inform by writing an article, but a well-written article is still widely considered as writing. That's because there is an expressive, internal aspect of the writing, manifested in the choice of description for particular objects of examination, as well as particular linguistic, semantic techniques. The reporter expresses, and through that, they influence and provoke.

So a writer is not simply one who puts words down for people to read, a writer is someone who uses the written word to bring the intangible to the surface, and manipulates it or examines it with the images and scenarios they create.