One on my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, would sit and create sonnets in her head, not writing them down until each line was perfect. Milton, as we all learned in school, was blind and he said Paradise Lost to an amanuensis as he composed it. He claimed that a divine spirit inspired him at night and in the morning he would recite new verses. Both of these authors knew what they wanted to say before committing to print. I envy them.
I seem to be working out the novel as I go. My story hasn’t changed since the first draft, but they way I want to tell it has. I’m in the midst of tedious editing as I change the chronology and presentation of events. The thing that bothers me is that I can’t really write in an inspired way for long stretches. It’s more like solving, or rather creating, a puzzle at this point. So I write a bit, think a bit, switch a scene or delete something, and read over it. It’s a series of stops and starts.
Of course, when I was in the middle of the first draft, you wouldn’t have heard me going on about “inspired long stretches.” Those tended to only come after a fair amount of hard work, but looking back it seems like halcyon days. Now it also seems best to work everything out in your head first. Think of all the time 
and typing I could have saved. Maybe if my novel were 14 lines I could do that, but I certainly couldn’t come anywhere close to Milton. The bastard.
It’s not quite the oddity one might think, as the proceeds have gone to charity for a local theater. Personally, I find it a very exciting development. I have been staring at the same bit of wall this past year writing my novel, and I’m sure its been a very important influence. I would be willing to part with this portion of the wall for a fraction of the sum Woolfe’s beach got. Similarly, there are these two orange pillows I’ve been resting my feet on. I feel the color orange now pervades my work. You could be the proud owner of Linnea West memorabilia before the rest of the world even knows that name. Think about it.