To support and substantiate the assertion that the relationship between teacher and students matters a great deal when written literacy is at stake, a case study was made of a teacher in one high school creative writing class during one semester. The intent was to learn more about the socially negotiated nature of school writing and to identify ways in which the teacher supported the acquisition process. Data were obtained through (1) field notes of classroom participant observation; (2) journals kept by the teacher containing his thoughts on the teaching of writing; (3) samples of naturally occuring student writing in the creative writing class; and (4) dialogue journals in which six student volunteers wrote with a researcher about their perceptions of the creative writing class. The data revealed that the teacher was not the sole audience for student writing or its formal evaluator. Using the writing contest as an "occasion for writing," the teacher helped students to write for audiences other than the teacher and for purposes beyond academic performance. As a teacher he enacted his role in several ways, including foreshadowing or providing context for the writing act, modeling the role of writer, motivating and providing resources to the student writer, creating the space within which writing can happen, and coaching by offering rhetorical strategies and encouraging responses to student efforts. (HOD)