What if? - a writer's ramble

It's the question everybody's asking. Or, it's a question everybody is supposed to be asking. 
What if?
I'm a scientist. (Trust me.) I always loved the facility in Microsoft Excel that allowed you to query your data. What if? You could create charts that would show what would happen if you tweaked this factor or that factor. Brilliant! It was a wonderful way of conceptually modelling the problem.
None of the foregoing should be taken to suggest that I loved Microsoft at any stage of my career. It was the ability to ask the question and see possible outcomes that I found fascinating. OK. Some credit should go to the guy or guyess within the leviathan Microsoft for thinking of and providing the facility but, moving on, it is the question that is important. It unlocks possibilities.
Now, I was never a very good scientist. I could always see too many possibilities and I could never concentrate on one for sufficiently long to produce a respectable scientific result. 
I have the same problem as a writer. 
Too many ideas. 
I don't have to ask the question. Answers bubble up in my brain whether I ask for them or not. Consequently, my characters and plot race off wildly in all directions, careless of structure and concept. What I need is not the question but focus. I need discipline.
Tough one.
Writing, for me, is about freedom.
But then, there is that other lesson I learnt, or at least recognised, a long time ago, in the middle of a field one fine February morning digging a hole in the soil in order to find the answer. There can be no freedom without structure, no liberty without law. They coexist. If we want freedom we must accept the constraints within which freedom exists. 
Life is chaos within bounds.
Ask the question. Let the answers bubble up. Direct the flow into channels that irrigate the row you're hoeing. Watch the crop grow. Allow the excess to drain away ... or use it for something, like driving the ideas mill to grind your crop to flour. Harvest the fruit or the root or which ever part it is that equates with the concept you are pursuing. (See previous post.) 
Write, write and write again.

 What if?
A tough question but necessary.

Ends