The speeding train

I find most of my ideas from everyday, normal things. This is odd because my book is far from normal and ordinary, in fact, it’s damn well surreal. On a four hour trip from Norwich to Reading I took a pen, a notepad and my Ipod and just stared out the window for almost the entire duration. Mentally I went somewhere else. I wasn’t even thinking anything really; I was just staring out the window vaguely.

An unstoppable idea-train. This is actually a Norwich train, be impressed.

There was nothing in my head at all and nothing at all came to mind for quite a long time until, suddenly, I realized something in the novel. Something I’d left out. All of a sudden there was too much in my mind; the explanations, the reasoning, the timescales and the emotions all came rushing out at me and I had to work hard to put it all down before I lost my grip on it. I thought back through the entire novel to see whether it would fit and, bar one tiny reference, it would; it was already set up for me. It was as though it had always been there just waiting for me to catch up and figure it out. Whilst I was scribbling it down it was as though I’d just worked out the answer to a complicated philosophical question. I was writing with the sole purpose of not forgetting what had just happened somewhere in my previously vacant mind. You'd think there would be more control over it all, after all these are my ideas. Yet I’m still the one trying to keep up with them and stop them from either floating away or slamming into a brick wall.
                                                  

I’m not sure how other writers feel, is it as though you’re the puppet and not your characters? As if you’ve discovered something, not created something?