"What am I trying to say?" "It's on the tip of my tongue."

Two phrases I'm sure we're all familiar with. The process of conveying abstract thought in coherent words is something we all encounter on a daily basis. Even typing this out now, I'm having trouble finding the right string of words that best convey the ideas I'm trying to lay out. I've always suffered a bit of a disconnect when it comes to converting my thoughts into words. What usually ends up happening is I'll string together words trying to "capture" a certain "feel" of an idea, but is not in any way a cohesive sentence, if they could be considered sentences at all. This type of "stream-of-consciousness" writing may have its purposes, but is not at all practical in real world applications. How do you convert your brain-mash to a form that makes sense to other people? What tips and tricks do you, the good people of Snapzu, have for organizing your thoughts?