What she said

The best thing that can happen to me when I'm writing fiction is to lose sight of the fact that I'm writing at all. It's as though I enter into a kind of trance. I know I'm writing but I don't think about it. I just let my fingers type--it's as though the feeling comes out directly through them, bypassing the brain altogether. When that happens, I feel completely transported. There is nothing else like this feeling, very little else more important to me. That intimacy I feel between myself and my work is what makes me feel at home on the earth. I am basically a shy person, basically a loner and an outsider; and I have been all my life. But when I achieve the kind of connection I can get through writing, I feel I'm sitting in the lap of God.

Elizabeth Berg, from Escaping into the Open: the Art of Writing True

I often read or hear things other writers say and have that "Wow, that's how I feel" experience, but rarely as strong as when I read this. I couldn't possibly have said it better.