I love the way you write, following the flow. I can't imagine not having thoughts randomly running through my mind even without trying to consciously summon them. Laying my head on the pillow at night is always a challenge to shut off the thoughts long enough to fall asleep. When I write a fiction piece I usually have NO IDEA where it is headed after the opening. But one scene feeds the next and the story materializes.
Also, I love that word game you mentioned. What a great way to invoke your mind to summon up new words that have been lying dormant!
This is a pretty cool process, isn't it? Do you ever surprise yourself as to where a story ends up or the way tone changes?
Sometimes I start off negative and end up feeling quite positive, sometimes (more rarely) it goes the other way. What I like about the way the human mind works is, we can even surprise ourselves.
The word game is a lot of fun and I think that one my daughter is reading, I will play versions of it with her. She likes language a lot. She sings her own songs and makes up little poems as she does jigsaw puzzles. I think it helps her focus or gets her brain working - it is cute.
I do surprise myself quite often when the story is finished. One of the favorite contests I like to enter is the FreeWriteHouse 3 prompt version where you start a story with the first prompt, then go to the second prompt to continue, then find out the 3rd prompt to finish.
My husband and I actually play a version of the word game when we are on a long drive, it really passes the miles!