Willam Dalrymple and the creative process

With many thanks to Alan Vest for this image

I like this remark by William Dalrymple in "My working day" series.

He is describing the final year of the four to five year project of writing a book:

"One year in four or five years you have to be completely eaten up by the book.  If it is working, you are really dreaming your book, not as a figure of speech, but in a very literal sense.  You are harnessing the power of your subconscious"

This perfectly describes the creative process, or one stage of it, and explains why it can be so draining.