Annealing is a pretty simple process that most people don't understand.

You don't need water- The oft-quoted way of annealing is to place cases in a pan and heat the necks until they are cherry red, then tip them over. All this does is protect the case body from annealing while over-annealing the neck. If you heat the necks this hot, they will be annealed, but won't have enough tension to hold a bullet. BC's idea of using a temp stick is a good one- it will keep the necks from being overannealed.

You don't need to quench brass to anneal it. Once the brasss is heated hot enough, its already anealed. Dropping it in a bucket of water or tipping it over in a pan is useful if you don't want to deal with hot brass lying around. I just toss them in a coffee can (the old kind, made of real metal) to cool.

Annealing by holding on to the rim is the easiest way to do it. You turn the brass in the flame to heat it as evenly as possible. You'll see 2 color changes- the first is where the brass gets shiny as the water is boiled out of the surface of the brass, followed by the brass turning a blueish-purple color as its annealed. You keep the brass in the flame until the blue color hits the case body. I've never tried this on WSSM cases and don't know if it would work because of the short casemight conduct heat to your fingers too quickly, but I use this method for knecking up .284 brass to make 7.5x55 brass, and anneal cases .308 and larger ever 3-4 firings to extend their life. (Note, I don't anneal .308 brass per sebecause its very easy to replace but save my annealing time for european cartridgescases that are much more difficult and costly to replacebut I have tried it with .308)