You got the jest of the line... My work flow on most of my songs (at least all the songs on the Risen from the Ashes Upcoming Album..yea shameless plug on that one...lol) is its written from nothing to 1st draft in about 4 to 6 hours...I use my voice recorder on my phone to record the separate verse, then I go to upper verse, then the chorus... I have to keep playing back the verse recordings to remember the melody by time I get to the chorus

I then take the next couple of weeks stepping back listening to it, making tweaks, stepping back listening to it, making tweaks...thank goodness for version control...lol

Its a work flow that seems to work for me...