Writing is a very efficient medium to think through things.
Drawing is also.
Photography is also.
Painting is also.
Wood working is also.
In different ways, they all have their own modes of discovery.
They can be a mixture of planning and exploration.
You can have a vague idea of something you might be interested in, then pick a medium to start exploring the space.
You might end up switching mediums along the way, or purposefully picking one that doesn’t seem right, just to get a different angle, or learning to see through a new lens.
Writing let’s you much more easily develop you thoughts than, say photography.
Where photography becomes interesting for me is as a series, not as individual photos. As soon as they become a series, they represent thoughts in a more clear way, and they might give a better representation of an idea.