Idea Trains

Dear Wal,

Here's what happens in my brain when I get an idea:

I see something, maybe it's a tree or a person on a bike or a piece of trashy costume jewelry at the dollar store,  maybe it'll be a feeling of dejavu, like I've known that image somewhere from some vague dream or lost memory, and the idea starts as a feeling in my mind. I follow it deep down into the depths of my imagination and there I find an answer, a complete thought formed as a story or a detail of a larger puzzle. Minutes, hours, days pass and the puzzle gains more pieces, coherent shapes start to form among the madness of colors. I start putting the pieces together, finding the boundaries of this new idea and filling in the blanks. It dictates when I start writing. It may be when the puzzle is complete, it may be when I only have the face of the main character, or just a simple, tiny detail from which all else stems.

Here's what happens when Watson gets an idea:

I’m thinking... The ideas are forming... congealing and setting like rock hard concrete... music, my music is blasting through my brain, scrubbing away all excess fragments of thought... I can feel it, it’s there... just out of reach... perfect, but not yet solidified... rereading the previous post, trying to break my perfect post out of its mold without disfiguring it like a hastily tamped sand castle... I almost have it, just a little longer; but not too long; else it will crumble and I’ll have to remold it...all it will take it the right song; the right cords of the guitar, the perfect beat, the muse of another artist’s lyrics, the siren's call of that right voice... I got it. (Shadowhuntress 4-16-12)

Her's is much better than mine. 

/endrant

P.S. Yes, my plagiarizing nazi friends, that is credit you see there at the end of that paragraph!