To pursue doctoral degrees is a growing choice for many adult learners who come to doctoral study with a range of personal, professional and educational backgrounds. This qualitative study explored perceptions about writing collected through a phenomenological interview process. The study applied sociohistorical perspectives of writing in research with six adult learners in the process of completing their doctorates in the field of education. A three-interview phenomenological interview approach, adapted from Seidman, and a conceptual framework influenced by Bakhtin led to the interpretation at the basis of the inquiry: multiple, competing, and seeming self-negating creative impulses (masks) are simultaneous aspects of the action associated with dissertation writing (tasks). Early school- and work-based experiences with writing were found to reflect in the experiences of six doctoral candidates at various stages of the education doctorate. The particular importance of work-based identity as a shaping aspect of the consciousness adult learners developed about themselves and their writing emerged in the study. During the dissertation phase of writing, doctoral students participate in a continual process of constructing texts. The form of the text is shaped by the institution, doctoral committee members, and influences from life history. Growing rates of participation and the shifting demographic profiles of doctoral education participants make the study of adults in such a specialized learning context a rich site for research inquiry. The study provides implications for research with educational practitioners and also for studies of adult learning, doctoral education, academic writer identity, and adult higher education pedagogy.