Scattered ideas, scatter brain
Thoughts are scattered, Bits of ideas sparkle here and there. They are sparse and come to you in pieces that need to be ironed out and developed.
That's why they have to be planned out and put in a framework that make sense and in a logical order.
Writers receive ideas at an instant. They flow into the brain but they can leave just as fast as they come in because the mind is like a ticking clock, it is constantly being replenished with thoughts and beliefs and how-to-do-things.
Time is not constant because its hands keep moving, being replaced by other seconds, minutes and hours, and so the ideas and how we perceive keep changing. The mind has a way of concentrating at some ideas at any one time, and then moving along to focus on others.
If you don't write them down at the first instance you think of them, they are replaced, or became enmeshed in a 'thinking brain' that keeps accumulating as a whole part an aggregate of other ideas.
There is a fleeting process involved. These ideas come to you in the most strangest of places and situations. They can come when you are leaving the office, in your car, eating supper, at night just before going to bed, or would you believe it in the toilet!
That's why you have to be prepared and at the ready. Many writers carry with them a little notebook or a piece of paper. So when a thought or ideas register in their mind, they can jot it down as fast as possible.
This is to make sure it doesn't go away, sort documented in some place and is not replaced by another through the thinking brain.
We often overlook the continuing power of the pen and pencil in the age of the computer but with the notebook or paper they can still be up a great sustainer of the thoughts that travel in the cerebrum, keeping them in little boxes to be developed when the time is right and ripe.
Of course now with continual changes of technology the mobile and mini-computers, it has become easier still to jot down ideas.
Great writers, journalists, and chroniclers have always had their notebooks and pens handy because they knew their brain is a ticking time mover of events that need to be documented.
There was many a time when I would think of an idea, a headline or a lead when I am just about to go to sleep and I would get up especially and jotted down. I found if I didn't do that, it would perish into thin air the next morning.
Over the years, especially when I worked at a newspaper, I trained myself to do that, and write it down so it can be remembered and/or expanded upon the next day. This is especially important in the newspaper business where words and ideas become your stock-in-trade.
Ideas are a perishable commodity, you have to pin them down, document and make them tangible. That's why the notebook with the pen and pencil are needed to be at hand so they can help the hand to jot dot what the brain is thinking. Today with electronic notebooks becoming readily available at our finger tips the type of writing and its quality should become more dynamic colorful and exciting with full of buzzing ideas.