I found this nice quote while reading boingboing.net:

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. . . . Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
--E.L.Doctorow

Most of the time software development works exactly like this. If you're lucky, you can use such marvelous tools as Common Lisp and Emacs. Explorative programming in a language other than Lisp is pure torture most of the time.

Here is another good quote by Erik Naggum about the relationship between writing and coding:

Like other information should be available to those who want to learn and understand, program source code is the only means for programmers to learn the art from their predecessors. It would be unthinkable for playwrights not to allow other playwrights to read their plays, only be present at theater performances where they would be barred even from taking notes. Likewise, any good author is well read, as every child who learns to write will read hundreds of times more than it writes. Programmers, however, are expected to invent the alphabet and learn to write long novels all on their own. Programming cannot grow and learn unless the next generation of programmers have access to the knowledge and information gathered by other programmers before them.
--Erik Naggum in comp.lang.lisp

Richard P. Gabriel wrote a very good book about the relationship between writing and programming. His Patterns of Software is available online at RPG's site.