Writing is a process, and a literary work evolves through various stages of revision in that process from the earliest creative moments of mental transcription (when writers make up words in the mind and transfer them on the page) to moments of publication and on to moments of adaptation in other media. The literary work also appears in different material manifestations throughout its existence; working drafts, fair copies, proofs, and authorized commercial editions. But textual fluidity does not end here. In the hands of readers a text’s material presence changes in other ways through censorings, bowdlerizations, translations, adaptations, and even scholarly editions.
writing, that is, the activity of the writer, understood both as the time when a work is brought forth and as an original way of treating language.