WRITING: a practice driven by the search for an optimal adequacy of execution and intention

Abstract

This text aims at displaying how important it is that the role of the writer/ author unfolds into different assignments that range from reader to editor, while also being a researcher, a discoverer, a reviewer and a critic. One then notices the difference between the performance of all these duties by the author himself and the assumption of the same roles by different agents from a standpoint of the work in progress by distributing tasks, according to what the narrator in S. Bernardo, by Graciliano Ramos, suggests right at the beginning of the novel. In order to support the necessary arguments, it was crucial to have access to testimonies from professionals of writing, as they are able to testify first hand to the obstacles inherent to this enterprise. The lesson drawn from this text points at promoting the practice of this verbal process so as to conform the written “execution” to the writer’s “intention” (Sommers, 1980), given that writing can only become less distant and more familiar if practiced often and in full awareness of its dynamics.