Encircling man who says he's a writer (7)
I believe the answer is:
simenon
'writer' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'encircling man who says he's a' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'man' could be 'sim' and 'sim' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for simenon that I've seen before include "Maigret creator" , "Belgian crime writer" , "Maigret author" , "Foreign writer" , "Maigret's creator" .)