words and ideas

I do a lot of writing when I'm walking. I don't mean physically writing, but formulating words and sentences and developing ideas. Somehow my mind just does this on its own. I don't have to consciously focus on something I'm writing, it just plays in my mind. 

It's similar to rumination in a way, except more constructive. It's amazingly detailed though. Like, if you asked me to recall, word for word, something I've written and I'm working on, I would probably struggle to do it, but there's a process running in my mind that goes through what I've written a word at a time, and goes over and over it, and then sometimes I'll come up with a better wording, other times I'll think of an idea that I want to add. The process involves ideas and words. 

Outwardly there's always a difference. What is expressed in words is always a little different from what is in your head, partly because the purpose of the words is to explain your ideas to other people and also to yourself. 

I remember when I was first learning how to structure an essay and I was so aware of the difference between the way ideas are formulated in my mind and the way to formulate them in words. You would think it would be a direct translation - that writing an essay would just be a matter of systematically conveying the ideas in your mind into words. But no - our ideas are not structured in essay form in our minds, at least my ideas aren't.