The author argues for a reinvigorated focus on writing “as material, corporeal action” and proposes a framework of “distributed writing” through which to enact this focus. This framework highlights writing’s simultaneously material and embodied nature and can help scholars further examine and understand interactions among tools, artifacts, and writing bodies. Continuing to study writing “as material, corporeal action” is necessary as 21st century tools for writing continue to change.

Through a study of collaborative writing at a student advocacy nonprofit, this article explores how writers distribute their text planning across tools, artifacts, and gestures, with a particular focus on how embodied representations of texts are present in text planning. Findings indicate that these and other representations generated by the writers move through a spectrum of durability, from provisional to more persistent representations. The author argues that these findings offer useful insights into the relationships among distributed cognition, materiality, embodiment, and text planning and have implications for practitioners and students of writing. Additionally, the author recommends that scholars further investigate the ways in which embodied representations of texts are generated through lived experiences with the materials of writing.