Plotting at the keyboard
I mentioned to Mary Anne this afternoon that I pretty much can't plot (whether fiction or games) unless I'm sitting at the keyboard; when I try to do it in my head, I just go around and around in circles. (I think partly it's that starting to write down words somehow sparks my imagination, in a way that just thinking doesn't. And maybe partly it's that writing down the words gets them out of the way--I no longer have to hold them in my head--so I can move on to thinking about the next bit.)
Mary Anne said that she sometimes does some of her best plotting when she's not sitting at the computer.
So now I'm curious: what, if any, aspects of writing do y'all writer types need to do at the keyboard (and/or with a pen or pencil in hand), and what aspects can you do (and/or what aspects do you prefer to do) when you're not actually putting words on paper or on the screen?
Bearing in mind, of course, that there's no one right way to write, and that every writer's process is different, and that the goal here isn't to find out How It's Done but just to hear about different people's writing processes.
(My plotting at the keyboard this evening--for tomorrow's final session of the RPG--has been reasonably productive, but I still have a ways to go. But I'm too tired and headachey to keep going tonight, so my headache and I are going to go to bed, and I figured I'd stop and post a quick entry on the way.)