ABSTRACT
Each process costs time. This is a main feature of processes that has received relatively little attention. To state it simply, a writing process starts and ends. In a writing process, several cognitive activities are exploited. At each moment, a writer has an opportunity to engage in a lot of different cognitive activities. The writer has to decide, be it consciously or not, which cognitive activity has to be employed to meet the ends at a specific moment. Some of these decisions are obvious (e.g., one does not generate ideas if one has not read the assignment first). Others are perhaps less obvious (in order to generate further ideas one can reread the assignment, and/or some of the text already written). And still other decisions are possible but not theorized yet. Note that in both examples a functional (means-end) relation exists between different cognitive activities.
