Answering the Writer's Block Case
Student work, read as an artefact and anonymised: one accurate insight at its centre, two silences where the case asked its questions, and one item of advice that is a straightforward integrity breach.
The artefact, and how this page reads it
The submission answers the case study set out at Overcoming Writer's Block: a researcher six weeks from submission whose research is finished and whose writing has not started. The activity asked what she should do and directed answers to the week's forum.
It reaches this library under two different filenames. A word-level comparison of the two shows a single difference - the closing sentence ends one way in one file and adds a few words in the other. They are one submission, saved twice. Neither filename describes what the document is: one names an assignment, the other reads as a truncation of something else entirely, and the content is a forum post.
THE SUBMISSION, AS SUPPLIED
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Task answered | The week's activity - what should the researcher do? |
| Stated length for the component | 300 words |
| Body length | About 318 and about 322 words across the two files |
| Against the stated length | Over, by roughly 6 to 7 per cent |
| References listed | Two, both automated web captures |
| In-text citations | One, informal, naming a blogging site rather than an author |
| Figures | One - a copyrighted cartoon |
The 300-word figure is the stated length of this week's component of the third assignment. It is stated once, on a late slide of the same week.
For context, this is the fifth distinct student submission held by this library and the first to exceed its stated length by more than three per cent. The running record across the five is three under and two over. That is an observation about five artefacts and is not a statistic about students.
What the submission advises
Paraphrased, and in the order it gives them, its recommendations are these.
- Start writing whatever can be written, on the basis that a thousand words a day is achievable.
- Do not worry about editing, or about where to start.
- Focus on the relevant study data rather than on reaching a length.
- Use the already-analysed data as the basis for outlining the chapters.
- Build the writing "from the inside out".
- Address the fear that is causing the procrastination.
It closes by recommending a mentor, and rewarding yourself as each stage is completed. Between those items sits the recommendation examined further down this page.
What it gets right, and it is not a small thing
The fourth recommendation is the good one. The case reports that the researcher analysed her data and built a coding tree mapping the relations between three named themes. Under the panic - the deadline, the blank screen, the nausea - that fact is easy to read past, and the submission does not read past it. It builds its advice on the observation that the analysis is finished.
That is the single most important fact in the case. It means the block is not a research problem, and it means at least one chapter can be drafted this week from material that already exists. This library reaches the same conclusion by a different route on the companion page, and the submission gets there first.
Three things worth keeping from it
The analysis is already done
It identifies that the data is analysed and coded and makes that the basis of its advice. That is the fact the case buries under its own atmosphere, and spotting it is the difference between useful advice and generic encouragement.
Procrastination as fear, not laziness
It treats the failure to start as fear rather than as a character defect, and directs advice at the fear. The case supports that reading: the researcher does not lack time or intent, she sits down, stares at the screen and feels sick.
Staged rewards
Rewarding yourself on completion of each stage is a real technique and it fits a task that is long, unsupervised and low in visible progress. It is offered without a source, but it is not a claim that needs one.
The two problems it never touches
The case states four difficulties. The submission addresses two of them and is silent on the other two - and the two it misses are the two that the case itself flags hardest.
THE CASE'S FOUR STATED PROBLEMS AGAINST THE SUBMISSION'S COVERAGE
| Problem stated in the case | Addressed? | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Cannot start writing; confused about how the sections fit together | Yes | Answered directly - start with what exists, work outwards, do not edit yet |
| Fear and avoidance in front of the blank screen | Yes | Answered directly - named as fear and addressed as fear |
| "How is she ever going to write a coherent Methods chapter?" | No | The one question the case asks in its own words goes unanswered |
| Reading done but notes never organised for the Literature Review | No | The second recoverable problem is not mentioned at all |
The coverage assessment is this library's reading of the submission against the case text.
There is a structural reason worth naming. Advice built on what exists cannot reach a problem defined by what is missing. Once the submission anchored on the analysed data, every recommendation that followed - outline from the data, write from the inside out, do not edit yet - was about arranging material that is present. Nothing in that frame can produce a Methods chapter whose source material was never recorded.
The recommendation no reader should follow
Among its list of remedies, offered without qualification and in the same breath as the legitimate ones, the submission suggests taking the help of an external writing service.
Note what it would not have solved even setting integrity aside. The researcher's problem is that the record of her own research process is missing. No external party can write a Methods chapter describing decisions that were never documented and that only she was present for. The recommendation fails on its own terms as well as on the rules.
The equivalent in delivery work is close enough to be uncomfortable. Having a report written by someone who was not on the project produces a document that reads well and cannot be defended in the room, because the author cannot answer the question behind any sentence in it.
Where the cartoon came from
The submission includes one figure: a cartoon, dated 2014 and made by a professional cartoonist. It is credited in the submission to a blog that had reposted it - the place where the writer found it. The cartoonist's signature is visible in the artwork itself, and the originating website is printed on the image.
The cartoon is not reproduced on this page and should not be reproduced elsewhere on the strength of the submission. It is a copyrighted work by an identifiable creator, and a reposted copy does not carry a licence with it.
Before you reuse any image, chart or figure
- Look at the artwork itself for a signature, watermark, credit line or printed address
- Follow the trail back until you reach a page that claims to have made the item
- Credit the creator, not the aggregator, blog, deck or search result you found it in
- Record the licence terms at the moment of capture, not at the moment of submission
- If the origin cannot be established, do not use the item - an unattributable figure is a liability in a document you have to defend
- Apply the same test to charts and tables lifted from a slide deck: a deck is a location too
The mechanics of building a defensible reference are at Harvard Reference Anatomy, and the capture discipline that prevents this class of failure is at Note-Taking and Bibliographic Records.
Two claims that read like evidence and are not
Both claims do the same rhetorical work: they make a piece of advice sound established. A reader who accepts the first plans a six-week write-up around a rate that nothing supports. A reader who accepts the second may conclude that a substantial proportion of borrowed material is normal, which is a short step from the integrity problem above.
The test is the one applied to any source: who says this, on what evidence, and can I check it? Applied here, all three answers are unavailable. That test is set out at Assessing the Academic Value of Sources.
What a complete answer would have covered
The component was set at 300 words, which is short enough that no answer can treat four problems in detail. That constraint does not excuse the omissions - it points at the move that would have solved them. One sentence of classification covers all four problems at once, because all four are the same kind of problem.
A 300-word answer that reaches everything
Classify the problems once
Say that the research is complete and the record of it is not - that the data, analysis, coding tree and themes all survive, and the drafts, diary, access account and organised notes do not. One sentence, and every subsequent recommendation has a target.
Start where the evidence is densest
Draft from the analysed data and the coding tree, as the submission correctly recommends. This is the only part of the existing answer that survives the classification unchanged.
Rebuild the methods account from artefacts
Correspondence, consent materials, interview schedules and calendars are evidence of how the project ran. Reconstruct from those, and state plainly which decisions can no longer be evidenced.
Treat the notes as sorting, not reading
The reading was done. Organising the notes is a bounded task with a known input - and it is work that can be done on a day when drafting is impossible.
Give the supervisor something this week
A partial draft with a declared gap turns an open-ended panic into a review with an agenda, and the material's own advice is to show drafts early.
The same reading applied to three other submissions, against the briefs that set them, is at Answering a Research Methods Assignment.
What to carry forward
- The submission's central insight is right: the case's data is already analysed and coded, and that is where the writing can start.
- It never addresses the Methods chapter, which is the one problem the case asks about explicitly, nor the unsorted Literature Review notes.
- Advice built on what exists cannot reach a problem defined by what is missing - which is precisely why both omissions are the recording failures.
- The external writing service recommendation is contract cheating and an integrity breach. It is a defect in the advice, recorded as such.
- It would also have failed on its own terms: nobody outside the project can document decisions that were never recorded.
- Credit the creator, not the site you found the image on. In this case the signature and the originating address were printed on the artwork itself.
- A thousand words a day is an unattributed claim in a student forum post, not a planning rate.
- When answering a case, tick off every difficulty the case names. A short word limit is an argument for classifying the problems, not for ignoring half of them.
Frequently asked questions
Why publish an analysis of a student's forum post at all?
Because it is a real answer to a real activity, and the gap between what it saw and what it missed is more instructive than a model answer would be. It is anonymised, and the faults are recorded against the document rather than the writer. The same approach is applied to other submissions held by this library.
Is using a proofreader also contract cheating?
The distinction turns on who produces the work. Commissioning someone to write your content is contract cheating; institutions differ in what editorial assistance they permit. Check your own institution's rule before engaging anyone, and disclose assistance wherever that rule requires it.
What should the submission have said about the Methods chapter?
That the chapter is written from the record of the research process rather than from the data, that the record is what has gone missing, and that the remaining work is to reconstruct it from surviving artefacts and to declare honestly what cannot be reconstructed. That answer is available from the case itself without any outside material.
Is one thousand words a day realistic?
This library cannot say, and neither can the submission. The claim appears in it with no study, no named researcher and no citation, and it is recorded here only as a claim the document makes. Planning a write-up against an unattributed rate is planning against nothing.
How do I find the original creator of an image I want to use?
Start with the artefact: signatures, watermarks and printed addresses are common and are often ignored. Then follow the chain of reposts back until you reach a page that claims to have made the work, and capture the licence terms there. If you cannot reach an origin, do not use the image.
Does going 6 per cent over a word limit matter?
On its own it is a minor fault, and this library records it as one. It matters more as a pattern: exceeding the limit while leaving half the set problems untouched indicates that the available words went to elaboration rather than to coverage.
References and source attribution
- The supplied teaching source: weekly study notes, slide decks and assessment activities for a master's-level research methods subject in project management. Author, institution and year are not stated in the supplied files.
- An anonymised student submission supplied with that material under two filenames, answering the Week 13 case study activity. Approximately 318 and 322 words, differing from one another by a single closing phrase. Its own reference list consists of two automated web captures, which are not reproduced here.
- The Week 13 slide deck, slide 17, which carries the case study the submission answers, and slide 30, which states the 300-word length of that week's assignment component.
- The copyrighted cartoon included in the submission is not reproduced, cited or identified here. It is a 2014 work by an identifiable creator whose signature appears in the artwork, and the submission credits it to a site that reposted it.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Check my case study answer: which stated problems in the case have I left unaddressed?
- Rewrite this advice so every recommendation names the sentence in the case it responds to.
- What is the difference between permitted editorial assistance and contract cheating?
- I found this figure on a blog. How do I trace it back to its creator before I use it?
- Turn these six pieces of advice into one classifying sentence plus three actions.
- Which claims in this draft are presented as established and carry no source?