Thanks.

A1: This story was written to meet a prompt, so the proviso was the story had to driven by Empathy and must contain Creatures. The rest is wide open.
I jot the prompt in my spreadsheet of editor calls and then in my notebook. Then, I choose which deadline is next approaching and walk around with the prompt in my head, tossing around ideas evolving from a basic premise. In this case, I decided that children elicit the most empathy and the child needs something to empathize over. The creature needed to have the same level of emotion but opposite to that of the child.
Then ideas fall like rain. I throw away conventional ideas until I find a theme. Then I’ll see a flash of an image of the conflict the characters face. I run to my notebook and jot it down then plot my structure.

A2. In most cases, I work best under pressure so in this case, I had the idea plotted and the writing from start to final edit took about 6 hours and met the deadline with an hour or so to spare.

Thanks for asking!