Via interview data focused on instructor practices and values, this study sought to describe some of what performing and visual arts instructors do at the university level to effectively teach disciplinary values through writing. The study's research goals explored how relationships to writing process in visual and performing arts support disciplinary participation in ways that are particular to that domain of practice. Using qualitative analysis to highlight recurring language in a series of interviews, the study engaged the following questions: how and why do instructors of performing and visual arts help students access a deeper understanding of art making or disciplinary identity through writing? What language is used to describe disciplinary or rhetorical concerns within the visual and performing arts? What particular purposes do texts usually address? And how do these texts exist as a key part of a disciplinary discourse? Working with a hypothesis that visual and performing arts use writing as a "component" part of disciplinary praxis as opposed to a tendency of much mainstream writing studies pedagogy and teacher training where writing "process" is frequently aimed at the creation of a final "written product," the study found that writing in the visual and performing arts does in fact use writing in ways that uniquely serve to support relationships between multiple modalities of expression (written, visual, tactile etc). Implications for writing studies generated from the study look at the importance of metacognitive reflective work, individuated instructional techniques, and multimodal or cross-disciplinary approaches to writing.