Based on constructivist theory (emphasizing meaning generation rather than communication), the study described in this report clarifies and elaborates on the definition of the term "expressive writing." First, the paper offers a rationale for the study and a discussion of the research methodology, which combined analysis of texts and theories as well as introspection. The second section presents a constructivist context for expressive composing, which proposes that written composition is a meaning-construction process, that meaning includes feeling, and that the constructivist model is a process rather than a developmental or text-classification model. The next section then describes the model and explains that, as a dialectic process, it includes notions of sense and imagination, anticipation (of what the text will look like) and expression, conscious and unconscious activity, superordinate and subordinate schemata--which suggests that texts are guided by an image of what the final form should be but are changed by internal and external forces as they emerge--and an overall dialectic of writing as an expressive and rhetorical act. Sections on process and text, the writer-reader dimension, and expressiveness and form are given, followed by subsections on such topics at associative patterns, patterns of repetition, patterns of narration, and figurative language most of which include examples from published and unpublished prose and poetry. A summary and a section suggesting directions for research conclude the paper. (Fifty-two references are included.) (JC)