What's a Metaphor?

For keeping your sheep in. Puns aside, I'm glad the metaphors seemed to be a hit. They are intended to be a way of thinking about your work, in part by not thinking about it. When we take the first choice that comes to mind, I'd argue we are doing what Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing." We are making sense of a situation quickly, so quickly that we don't notice the thinking that we are doing. He details such quick action (what others sometimes call intuition, but that's a term Gladwell dislikes) in his book _blink_, which I recommend: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html. I believe as writing advisors we also begin to thin slice, building up and then using our experiences with many writers to decide where to go in a session quickly. We might not be able to chart our thinking as to why we made a decision, but it's still a thoughtful response, one made too quickly to capture. I think picking up the first metaphor (or simile) is similar. You are thinking about it, but that thinking is so buried that you are not cognizant of it.