This article focuses on the way in which text production is conditioned, as it progresses, by the already-written text. This is a question that arises from both psychology, inasmuch as it studies the cognitive activity of writers, and linguistics, in that it studies textual features. The article thus examines first the epistemological and methodological problems that a pluridisciplinary approach to written production must take into account. Then it focuses on the temporal nature of writing (writing’s temporality) and foregrounds the different temporal strata in which the production of writing is inscribed. Finally, the article explores the dependence between alreadyproduced text and text still to come, presenting the “eye and pen” tool that allows observation of ocular movements and thus highlights the way in which writers refer to already-produced text, which allows identification of writers’ differentiated behaviors.