write about

write about (someone or something)

1. To create a piece of writing that tells a narrative or provides detailed information about someone or something. A noun or pronoun can be used between "write" and "about" to specify the kind of writing that is being created. I'm currently writing about the First Indochina War for my new book. He's writing a novel about a butler who falls in love with his mistress.
2. To write a piece of correspondence, such as a letter or email, that discusses or inquires about someone or something. Usually used as an introduction in one's own writing. To whom it may concern, I am writing today about an offer you had advertised in your store. Hello Mrs. Jenkins, I am the Vice-Principal at Sand Dune High School. I'm writing about your daughter, Samantha, who has been absent from school for the last three days.
3. To send a piece of written correspondence, such as a letter or email, to someone in order to discuss or inquire about someone or something. In this usage, a noun or pronoun is used between "write" and "about." I'll write my friend in New York about the company that's offering the job. She'll be able to tell me if they're legit. He's writing the company's head office about the abusive employee he dealt with over the phone.
See also: write
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

write someone or something about something

to send an inquiry or statement to someone in writing about someone or something. I will write her about what you just told me. Sarah wrote the company about the faulty merchandise.
See also: write

write about someone or something

to write a narrative or description of someone or something. I wanted to write about wild canaries, but there is not much to say. Sally writes about famous people.
See also: write
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • not do (someone or oneself) any favors
  • rescue from
  • rescue from (someone or something)
  • piece out
  • identify with
  • attune to
  • ask back
  • orient
  • orient to
  • orient to (something)
References in periodicals archive
A writer cannot write about every moment anyway; it would be too boring.
"Illuminating the darkened corridors": an interview with Alexs Pate
He says that access of black writers to the mainstream has only really happened in this century, and there is still a barrier there: "Excellence" in the work of black writers is judged by how well we write about "being black in a white world," which is obviously only one part of our lived experience.
Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson
One thing that immediately bothered me, and that no advice could have prepared me for, was the fact that I almost always had to write about "the new," which, at the time, practically every artist in New York was desperate to establish him- or herself as.
I always felt bad for the artists, good and bad, who hadn't mastered the art of dissembling ambition: they would just blatantly get my unlisted phone number and call me up, beg me to come to their studio, write about them, anything.
Critical reflections
So I thought, this is something I really have to write about.
Also, I'd been concerned about a trend I'd seen in publishing where black people were not getting a chance to write about black people, and black people were not written about at all.
Although I feel that anyone should be able to write about anyone--black, white, Asian, whoever.
Music man: writer Christopher John Farley's biography of the late pop singer Aaliyah is one of the latest books to capitalize on the success of black music
I don't know how to quantify that in what they write about. Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place is probably a woman's book.
I'm trying to be honest in what I write about and show how that story has dynamics that are damning and redeeming for everybody.
That balance is made difficult by having a family, that balance between being out in the world and being away from it long enough to write about it.
An interview with Brent Wade
Art writers are also mad because they don't have much good art to write about. Actually the fact that bad art rules should be a boon to art writers, but they don't understand that.
Think or thwim
"And it's an experience that we don't think about, or talk about or write about that much.
Literary checkmate: the overwhelming response to first-time novelist Stephen Carter has the publishing world calling it the next Bonfire of the Vanities
I didn't know what I was going to write about until a guy came by and said to the woman, "Remember me?" That started the man-woman aspect of the play, as though she had murdered him and he is coming back.
Blues, history and dramaturgy: an interview with August Wilson