Écrivain is a term used by Roland Barthes and others to denote something that is often translated as “author”, the producer of texts for whom the verb “write” is intransitive.
In this sense, writing focuses the reader’s attention on the writing activity and not on anything else.
An author (Écrivain) differs in this sense from a writer (Scripteur, Écrivant) in that the “writer” subordinates the writing to something other than itself.