This study explores how Deleuzian concepts of assemblage, affect, and rhizome can inform, and transform, our understanding of how technology shapes second language academic writing. More specifically, it focuses on the practice of L2 academic writing as novice writers compose a source-based research paper in an English for Academic Purposes bridging program. The study followed seven student participants over several weeks as they worked on this assignment. Data-collection instruments included ongoing interviews throughout the writing process, document analysis of written drafts, screencast recordings, and researcher diary. Rhizoanalysis was used to analyze the data and map connections between the elements operating in the student writers' assemblage. Vignettes are presented to problematize conventional reading of data and to turn attention to texts in L2 writing research as asignifying machines. Reading participant data differently allows for exploration of the interconnections between the material, affective, and expressive elements and forces in the digital mediated source-based writing process. For these novice L2 student writers, the elements and forces in their assemblage operate in unique and unpredictable ways, producing unforeseen outcomes.