This article describes how four English language arts teachers formed an inquiry group to design approaches to writing assessment that would support and foster student writers' agency, empowerment, and freedom. They hoped that by focusing assessment on students' articulation of their writing processes rather than on rubrics or final products, they could foster in students a sense of freedom to take risks and try things in their writing, even things that might not work. This kind of assessment would not assume mastery at every stage of the writing process, but it would rightly position the many "failures" that occur on the way to a polished piece as interesting and often productive jaunts of the mind.