The Study of Professional Writing

Abstract

In this article, we argue that examining the writing processes of literary authors would enrich and extend empirical research on writing, which is currently grounded in cognitive psychology. In most empirical studies of writing skills, experts are defined as either advanced students or technical writers, neither of whom work within the same constraints or timeframes as literary authors. Including literary authors in psychological accounts of writing, by drawing on the observations of genetic criticism (a linguistic-literary discipline that reconstructs the genesis of an author’s manuscript by collecting and interpreting the notes, drafts, revisions, successive versions, etc.), would add to our knowledge of professional writing. Two issues could then be considered: (a) the way the creative process takes place during writing and (b) the role of memory in the management of writing processes over extended time periods.