This study focuses on two high school seniors as they wrote in their British Literature and Psychology classes. We analyse the writing experiences of the two volunteer students as they produced formal academic writing (research, essays, and synopses), personal writing (poems, stories, and personal narratives), and hybrid writing (research written in the form of a letter to a classmate). The primary data came from concurrent and retrospective protocols produced by the two students in relation to their writing. Additional data sources--classroom observations, the teacher's teaching journal, curriculum materials, and the students' writing portfolios--helped to contextualise their writing. Through the protocol analysis we found that the students' academic writing was often a frustrating experience due to their efforts to take on the authoritative voice of their sources; their personal writing was more satisfying and engaging because they could rely on familiar events and a more fluent voice for expression; and the hybrid writing allowed them to engage with the content of formal research with the comfortable voice of their personal writing. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)