When it comes to writing how good is your memory?

Are you the kind of person who makes copious notes or do you store things away mentally and recall them later when you can sit in peace and get the words down?

I tend to be the latter. I do make notes but I do a lot of development work in my head, characters, themes, events, things like that. It seems to suit me better as I tend to become somewhat impatient if I try to write everything down. When I started my novel I attempted to write character biographies as I had read that this was considered a necessity; I found it boring!

Okay, there could be a question of self-discipline in there but I am not so sure. I have the discipline to sit down and write when it comes to the novel itself, it is just the ancillary pieces that I have a problem with.

I suppose that I must be lucky in that I have a good memory so I do not seem to struggle to recall things. I find that once I start working on a piece that I have previously contemplated everything seems to flow automatically. I can keep the characters separate, I can develop the incident, I can craft the piece so that it fits with the plot. No problem.
If anything it seems to me that working from notes alone would be a very slow method of writing, but that is purely my opinion. It is based upon my experience if having to work from research notes, which are both essential and inevitable to the writing of historical fiction. I love doing the research but I have to set myself up to work the facts into fabric of the story and it always seems to take longer than when writing purely from my imagination.