Purpose: This paper aims to examine how doctoral students in education and applied linguistics fields successfully navigated graduate writing demands by participating in a support community that catalyzed writing productivity, peer mentoring and feedback. Guiding graduate students' writing processes based on scholarly interests and providing peer support are vital to scholarly productivity and transition into academia. Design/methodology/approach: Following a collaborative analytic autoethnographic case study design (Adams et al., 2022; Chang et al., 2013), the authors narrated major events that impacted their writing and publication experiences. The authors visualized their entire doctoral writing experience based on the frequency of writing events that contributed to writing productivity. In data triangulation discussions, the authors reflected on writing experiences. Findings: Findings show that the support community alleviated individual struggles associated with writing a dissertation and high-quality papers. Key factors contributing to scholarly growth included nonevaluative peer support, feedback and shared academic resources. Writing within the periphery of faculty research and predominantly focusing on doctoral milestones led to individual scholarly interests being overshadowed. Without structured guidance, doctoral writers may develop initiatives to alleviate individual struggles and meet academic writing demands in the disciplines. Research limitations/implications: The authors recommend including structured guidance on developing writing productivity and a personal research agenda in the early stages of the doctorate. Originality/value: This study offers unique examples of how a student group supported writing productivity and socialization into the academic community. It illustrates the multifaceted nature of academic writing influenced by faculty-student relationships, peers and individual initiatives. This paper provides doctoral writers and graduate programs with examples of accomplishing academic publishing goals.