How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

I was reading some of the Fangs, Fur & Fey posts this week on their topic of the month, which is finding the beginning of the story. How do you know you're starting in the right place? This isn't really a problem for me--I usually start my stories pretty close to where they need to start--but it got me thinking about all of these posts I've been doing. They're all called "Workin' On It", but... I'm not actually working on any of these things. I mean...I am sort of working on the things I talk about here in a way, but...okay. It's not like I think to myself "Jay, you use 'suddenly' too much, so the next time you sit down to write, you're not going to use 'suddenly' at all," like I'm moving toward some Platonic ideal of writing the perfect first draft. It's more like "you use 'suddenly' too much, so make sure at some point you do a search for the word 'suddenly' and take out a bunc