A great deal. In writing, I am so terribly concentrated that I actually see nothing. Everything seems to be working out from my subconscious brain, whatever that is.
No.
Arthur Crabb: This is a bit too highbrow for me. It seems to me that a great many writers try to make an undue appeal to the senses and too little to the common sense of the reader. For instance, if a tale is laid at the seashore I am not particularly interested in having the writer explain to me that the air is salt and the sea is green and the sand is white, and so on. What I am interested in is knowing what the character thinks of it, that is, if the heroine has lived all her life at the seashore, the salt air and the green sea and the white sand probably do not interest her any more than the back of the brick building I see out of my office window interests me. If the heroine comes from an inland farm then the effect of the sea on her is decidedly different. The same thing in general applies to all the rest of human emotions. The idea of making a little shop girl, of no antecedents, go through the range of emotions that would put a prima donna to shame, is, it seems to me, unnecessary and undesirable. I recently started a story in which the author plastered on so many colors my only impression was a kaleidoscopic paint shop. The characters in the story never saw any of the colors at all.
I, like every other human being, can see things with my eyes shut, if I get what you mean. I can make imaginary characters act and picture imaginary scenes in complete detail. That, it seems to me, is absolutely necessary if one is to write at all.
I studied mathematics two or three years beyond calculus. Naturally solid geometry gave me more trouble than plane geometry or trigonometry. It is a far more complex proposition. I think the two are comparable to learning to ride a bicycle and learning to walk on a slack wire. Incidentally I think there is a catch in this question, but I am dodging it.
It depends on the author. Without checking myself up by compiling statistics I think the really great authors cut out what you call vivid description. Do you realize that the probability is that nothing in this world exists at all except in an individual's inner consciousness? The reader can not be, certainly ought not to be, particularly interested in some writer's own picture of something or other except as his characters are affected.
I certainly do not have stock pictures of anything.
I do resent.
My answer as to difference when reading and writing is "of course." My idea of a story is people; the description, plot, etc., are the frame of the picture. I am for instance not so much interested in who committed a murder as why the murderer did it.