I grew up with a distinct penchant for words. At 3, I could spell spaghetti. My parents would let me pore over the newspaper to encircle words that I wanted to befriend. I wrote my first stories on stapled pieces of scratch paper. I read books at lightning speed. I had always felt most at home whenever I read or wrote. Yet I was never comfortable with calling myself a writer. I’ve always felt like I still had so much to prove and publish. It wasn’t until I started surfing that I also gained the confidence to call myself a writer. Surfing taught me how to read waves and writing has always been my way of riding words. Today, I write in all the ways that I can write— stories, long Instagram captions, and love letters to La Union, where I live; I write articles for all kinds of clients, copywriting for all kinds of brands, ad writing, email writing, social media writing, product descriptions, and occasionally, the ever-elusive poem. Today, I have grown into the title of “writer” simply by writing and writing everything. And to be a writer, one only had to keep writing.
I am motivated by the moon; its cycles are a reminder of my own. I write in short seasons of work writing and personal writing. I make it a point to always have time for both. I am influenced by time in the water. My thoughts sound clearer when I am at sea.
Writing has been my own way of freezing time and space. When I read something I wrote in the past, I am taken back to the day I wrote it and I am re-introduced to a young-yet-old version of me. In my head, I sit down and have coffee with my young-old self. We talk about why we felt like we had to write that way and, always, we arrive at the conclusion that some days, some moments, deserve to be relived over and over. So here we are.
A few of Camille's written pieces are available as text designs for one-time inking.
