To write is…

‘To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs’ — the final words of Species of spaces, by Georges Perec (trans John Sturrock, Penguin 1997, p92).

Meself, I’d be inclined to make it ‘regain or retain’ in the first clause.