I usually access the online thesaurus at
www.dictionary.com and simply search up whatever is closest to the word I want to use. For rhymes I go to
www.rhymer.com which has something around five different types of rhymes to look up for the words. It even finds rhymes for orange.
Good suggestions indeed!
I tend to think about it for a moment, but if that perfect word fails to come to me, I implement the next best until I have that revelation farther in. Mind you, it does not always occur, but most of the time it will hit me like a 10-ton anvil : P
That happens to me sometimes, but not always. If I stop and think about it for awhile, usually I can come up with something, but there's been a lot of instances where I didn't feel I could and had to substitute with something that just didn't feel quite right.