Writers like to say things like "The idea just popped into my head fully fleshed out and ready to go" but that isn't the truth. We dwell on the initial idea for so long that we get mentally congested and have to get it down on paper so our brains can breathe again.
I've had a couple of stories pour out of me like something that already existed and was just using me as a conduit. It's exhilarating but exhausting. I once wrote and edited a short novella in two days because I simply could not stop.
Every single one of my stories is based on a single, isolated thing. The story is just me desperately trying to make that thing make sense in a broader context so my brain doesn't die screaming.
Interesting that writing feels like this from your perspective but I've heard too many wildly different externalizations of "what the process feels like"
My Grandma said that characters/stories lived and advocated for themselves from within her, and she merely documented her attempts to mediate them
