Good writing is really good thinking

I've been ruminating on this quote for some time that I heard on a podcast:

"I think that writing is just harder than other tasks. Because I think good writing is really good thinking, and there’s no way to like cheat that, right? There’s no shortcut to it, really. You can use flowery language to make something sound nice and pretty. But when it comes down to it, you have to have thought through your chain of thought… And to me, that's the painful part, is like "Oh, crap, I actually have to think through what I’m saying."

-- Alex Miller, JS Party Podcast Episode #275: Making web art the hard way