This paper is the result of an explorative study, based on in-depth interviews with 16 well known contemporary writers of fiction and poetry. Using an interpretative-phenomenological approach, we sought to describe and understand the processes involved in the formulation of the writer's or poet's self-identity as a creative artist. We have identified two basic narrative-metaphoric systems that guide the identity stories of those creative writers. The first, based on the dynamics of the 'Me', describes a process of building identity in sociocultural context, and the second, which finds its origin in the T, represents a transcendental quest for boundlessness, and aims to reveal some primeval, unconditioned nucleus of self. Despite their apparent dichotomy, these systems intertwine in complex ways that fertilise the ever-continuing search for the narration of the self - the essence of any literary creation, and, synchronously, the essential 'selfing' processes of the professional narrator as such.
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