Writing vs thinking

It's interesting how much difference writing down a thought makes. I sent something to a friend to look at the other day and she asked me to include some notes what my intentions were for the story. Nothing I wrote in those notes was something I hadn't thought about while writing it (except for one thing which was totally not relevant to the story at all but came to me as an aside to the character notes) and yet the process of setting it down made it immediately much clearer to me some of the ways in which the story didn't match what I wanted it for.

As a result, I ended up sitting down with the draft this morning and tweaking it, fleshing it out to try to make some of what I wanted to convey clearer and more focused. As a result of that, I've thought of two or three things that I should have included in the notes about the story about what my intentions were!

If the cycle continues, I'll be able to be my own beta reader at this rate :) Although on a more serious note, it does suggest that this is a technique I should be bearing in mind for the future when I write something that I feel isn't working the way I want (which was definitely the case here, I just couldn't pin it down before I wrote the notes).