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Writing in a foreign language is widely acknowledged as one of the most cognitively and affectively demanding skills for EFL learners. Beyond linguistic competence, successful L2 writing development is shaped by learners’ affective variables such as anxiety, enjoyment, motivation, and self-related beliefs (Hyland, 2016; Kormos, 2012). Among these variables, second language writing anxiety has consistently been identified as a major impediment to writing performance, fluency, and engagement (Cheng, 2004; Woodrow, 2011; Md Nor & Senom, 2024). In contrast, recent advances in positive psychology in SLA have highlighted foreign language enjoyment, including writing enjoyment, as a facilitative emotional factor that can enhance learners’ persistence, engagement, and achievement (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2016; Li et al., 2023). Parallel to this affective turn, motivation research has increasingly emphasized the role of the self, particularly within Dörnyei’s (2009) L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS). Central to this framework is the Ideal L2 Self, defined as the learner’s vivid and personally meaningful image of themselves as a competent future L2 user. Recent studies have extended this construct to skill-specific domains, giving rise to the notion of the Ideal L2 Writing Self, which captures learners’ aspirations and self-guides related specifically to L2 writing (Papi, 2021; Tahmouresi & Papi, 2021; Fathi et al., 2024). Empirical research has demonstrated that ideal L2 selves are closely linked to learners’ emotions, including anxiety and enjoyment, across various skills (Fathi & Mohammaddokht, 2021; Guan et al., 2023). However, despite a growing body of international research, studies that simultaneously examine writing anxiety, writing enjoyment, and the Ideal L2 Writing Self remain limited, particularly in underrepresented EFL contexts such as Iraq. In the Iraqi EFL context, university students often face large classes, exam-oriented instruction, limited exposure to auth