Alan Garner On Writing

Do you find writing easy?
No. It's like carving in granite. The marks you make on the page are the last stage of the process. I'm in my 51st year of doing nothing but write and for me, the period of not-writing has got longer, and the period of writing has got shorter. My last book took ten years but it was written in five months - all at the end. The writing part is like tying the parcel - it is not putting the parcel together.

(from The Guardian)