@humanodon mentioned walking and you mentioned biking, and I believe they call that "creative pause". Two years ago I was in a job interview and, because it was for a computer programming position, they asked about my approach to solving difficult problems, such as debugging weird problems. So I said something, like, "well sometimes I can't figure out the solution right away, so I think about it and then the next morning, while I'm taking a shower, it just comes to me." Oh brother. Now I did get the job, and it was a pretty laid-back place, but one of the guys from the interview made sure to whip that one out as a jest now and then. "Wanna take a shower on that?" "Did you think of that in the shower?" Thinking isn't a linear algorithm that runs on a single thread, it's a menagerie of algorithms running on separate threads and some of them are running in the background. You said that you sometimes start with a quote and spin it into your own interpretation, and now I want to gush about how I take the settings and characters of some book, movie or TV show and assemble my own story around it. Serial TV shows, for example, are like warehouses of characters and settings that you come to be organically familiar with, since those shows span months and years of viewing and development, and therefore can take for granted. It's like working with Lego bricks in your head. After you've hashed out the fundamentals, you replace the plastic bricks with something of your own, something with personal flesh and originality. Maybe this catapults you into another cycle of reinvention, but that's for the best. And, like you, I also like to get lost in my car. That's how I discovered a town named after a football player who had never been to that same town in his life. Jim Thorpe. I was somewhere in Pennsylvania and said to myself, "erm... THAT WAY!" I bought a wind-chime there.
I got lost in my car the other weekend and found a wonderful place called Drumright, Oklahoma, a tiny town that I'd never heard of. It had graffiti murals, a fort, and an old-style main street/storefront combo. I loved it. It was Sunday and everything was closed, or I would have bought a wind-chime.
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, is a really pretty town. It used to be a stomping ground of the Molly Maguires, and is nestled in the cleavage of some magnificent geology--forgive the metaphors. And when I'm in Oklahoma, I'm going to make a point of visiting Drumright. It sounds like something you want to visit on the Sunday before a national Monday-holiday :)