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I have recently gone several times through the following process: I struggle to solve some issue or other in my writing. Since this SE is so useful, I formulate my problem as a question. Having gone through the process of formulating my problem as an SE-appropriate question, I can now see the solution. Mission accomplished, no need to post anything.

However, there is a badge for answering my own question. So it appears to suggest that there is merit in posting a question and an answer? Should I then post question and answer? Are there any particular situations in which it is recommended to post / not to post?

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    I was really hoping you would have posted an answer to this question, just to see if people would vote it up or post an alternative. :) – Mark Maruska Jul 11 '18 at 17:23
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Answering your own question is great! There's a whole official blog post dedicated to this: It's OK to Ask and Answer Your Own Questions.

Most of all, it's useful to people in exactly the same situation as you: the ones searching for an answer, and not finding one.

The only real guideline, IMHO, is that the question and answer both need to work in their own right -- just like any post on the site. The question needs to be a real question -- and maybe other people will have better answers to it than yours!

Another thing I've had happen is that the act of phrasing the question can help you realize that your question didn't really make a whole lot of sense, or maybe it has a very obvious answer.

For example, you might start out with, say, "I can't write," and then you go, "gee, I need to be more specific," and then you wind up with "I don't have time to write until 10:00pm and then I'm exhausted." Well, you might feel like you know how to fix your schedule now that you've realized what the problem is. Or like this has turned into a time-management question which isn't really on-topic. In these cases, when the act of clarifying the question kind of invalidates it, I'd give more consideration to just letting the question drop.

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    "There's a whole official blog post dedicated to this: It's OK to Ask and Answer Your Own Questions." Never mind the blog post; there's the "answer your own question" checkbox right there on the "ask a question" page, below the Post button. That should tell you something! – user Jul 2 '18 at 11:58

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