General principle for mating with queen?

I'm a newbie. Just started the computer workouts. Was able to solve the Mating with Queen fine. But it took a while for me to get it in the minimum number of steps, 9. Every time I went back to try it again I had to really scratch my head. Q: Is there a general principle one can follow in this situation so that there's a minimum of head-scratching? The best I could come up with was: get the queen to the northeast of the king and push him into the corner with your queen. 

Don't worry about the minimum number of steps, just be confident you have a technique that can mate without ever giving stalemate.

as long as its under 50 moves and you have time then your safe

the rule of thumb is : restrict the opponent's space as much as possible, without stalemating.

As long as you eventually manage to do it, it's fine. Two bishops require more precision.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is: how would I "see" how to get this checkmate quickly. I can't imagine GMs have to even think about a problem like this. They can just "see" it. So I was wondering if there's a general principle to follow so that one can immediately "see" it. 

@Irongtiger: yeah, I guess that was what I was thinking. Mostly staying to the NE of the king with your queen to force him into a progressively smaller space. Avoiding stalemate takes care. I almost slipped a couple times.

u have to play a lot. its not something u memorize

Trap the king inside a small square with your queen. Bring your king across to help. Force the king to the side of the board. Then manouvre until their king is directly opposite yours and drop your queen onto the side for mate. e.g.:

Just practice for a while and you don't need to calculate, you just know what to play. Might not be the quickest mate but I never have to think.

note with lone queen and rook mates, you generally don't check, (exceptions exist). Simply keep denying squares to the opposing lone king, herding him to the edge.  Scott's diagram is correct. 

Also:

http://www.k4it.de/index.php?topic=egtb&lang=en

is an excellent "tablebase" site for self-drilling endgame situations.  It permits only up to six pieces.  But such is plenty for king and piece(s) verses lone king.  Should note that (until you are used to it) site can be a pain to set up pieces and move them around without accidently erasing them.  

Particularly with queens, beware of stalemates.  In Scotts line above, note 7 Qf5= draw.

Ya gotta romance her a little, she's royalty ya know?

But yeah, simple idea is to just move the queen a knight's move away (an L shape) from the enemy king over and over until it's against the edge.  As soon as the king moves against the edge look out for stalemate before automatically moving a knight's move away.

Pretty much what scottf posted already below...

Thx for the replies. 

• not really checking
• knight's move away
• watch for stalemate

all helpful. Should mention another member linked me to this video which I found helpful.