Probably going to move for being in the wrong forum, but...
The long spell you study in the morning is how you set the spell in your head. The words you say are the trigger unleashing it, kind of like winding up a crossbow and then pulling the trigger in a heartbeat.
Your spells are also not written in any common language. Each wizards spell looks different in a spell book or scroll. This is why the first thing you must do when casting a scroll or reading a spell book is decipher the text. Because of this it takes time to decipher, memorize, and then rewrite the spell in your own version of magical writing.
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Start reading about here. That's the preface to a wizard's spellbook.
DaVinci's diagrams are a nice analogy. Add in some equations and personal annotations.
Something I didn't ever understand, though, is why higher level spells take up so many pages in a book. If it can fit all on one scroll or a Page of Spell Knowledge, why does it take nine pages in a wizard's book? The only thing I could think of is comparing it to mathematical proofs, but even then, how do you cut that down so very much in other sources?
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I'd direct you to this pic here. Ironically I was just out hunting images last night for spellbooks. Spoiler alert: there aren't many cool ones I found.
The fluff around magical writing has always been vague, so I'll tell you what I've done. Magical spellbooks in my homebrew are thick, dusty tomes with several pages per spell after 1st level. The reason being that every spell is written long-hand. That is that nearly every permutation of the spell: duration, area of effect, components, etc is laid out in no uncertain terms. These are calculated and proofed by formulae.
So let's take the 2nd level spell Acid Arrow for example. Seems a simple attack spell: you point your focus (a dart), chant & gesture, hurl some material components and poof: a stream of acid arcs toward the target, inflicting damage. But what's the degree of the arc, or the velocity of the stream, or the PH balance of the acid? What universal energies do you have to well up inside you to release into the spell, and how are they measured? These and SO many other variables are laid out in the spellbook pages.
Now on a scroll the spell has been written in "shorthand" with the expectation that the wizard holding the scroll has at least passing familiarity with the spell; they've heard of it, seen it done, studied the theory or whatever. In other words, the research has already been done. The mystic scroll tells you what minutiae to cut through to get to the actual effect. This minutiae is still important to the spell though, so that info is STORED, in the scroll, in the form of magical energy. This is why scrolls radiate magic if detected.
So, in the case of the Acid Arrow scroll, the wizard who crafted the scroll took the time to get up in the morning, study the spell, read through all the variables and formulae, and then magically dumped much of their knowledge and study from that particular morning's devotions INTO the scroll. This is why, when a player in my game picks up a foreign scroll in my game, I often describe when they're using it how they hear the creator's voice whispering softly in their mind, or an image of the creator, or some powerful imagery during the scroll's creation (like the scent of rosewood incense or the bubbling of acids and bases or what not) fills their senses when they use the device.
So getting back to the Acid Arrow scroll, the scroll itself will have the basics: hold this, say this, calculate the range and fire. This info will be scribed in the arcane letters and sigils of the particular devotion (Arcane or Divine) that fuels the scroll. The Acid Arrow scroll for example might be a sturdy sheet of perse, brained black-dragon scale, pounded impossibly thin for such a dense material. Then it is coiled around one of the beast's smaller bones and bound in filigreed copper. The bizarre symbols also include a sketch of an arrow shrouded in a miasma of purple and green pigments, rows of sigils, and iconography of an adder on the upper and lower margins; the whole of the device smells faintly of rhubarb. Upon utilizing this scroll the whispered formulae of the spell fill the user's head as they are employing it's stored energies.
Hopefully this fluff has been useful for you and your players. If you want more there's lots of generators out there from older generations of these games that detail what materials go into these books and scrolls. You might have a tome of spells gouged into bony plates bound by gut of the creature who died to make it and decorated with cold iron and blood-colored garnets; you might have a "scroll" that is in fact a large clay tablet marked in cuneiform and inlaid with gold. Go have fun with it.
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While each spellbook is written in a unique style due to the lack of a Department of Magical Education or Board of Curricular Standards, there are commonalities between schools, subschools, and descriptors. Much like human grammar at its most fundamental is universal, the difference between a conjuration spell and an enchantment spell is such that they differ in a fundamental way, though the specifics are as varied as English and Korean (the latter of which has an utterly different way of conceiving adjectives, though both have a method to indicate that an object is red, for example).
The diagrams in a wizard's spellbook are a combination of geometric diagrams indicating the direction and interaction of the magical energies of the spell, and symbolic writing containing the minutiae a diagram could not convey. While the symbols can take nearly any form, the relations of the symbols to each other in position and rate of occurrence allow for a decipherment, much like a simple substitution cipher of sufficient length can be cracked by comparing it to the average rate of occurrence of given letters in a language's alphabet (i.e. the most common letters in English, in descending order, are etaoin shrdluc mfwyp vbgkjq xz).
The diagrams, being geometric designs, are truly universal, allowing a wizard with the proper training sufficient information to determine the order of commonality for the various magical concepts spells of that type should contain. These are represented (in a manner idiosyncratic to each wizard) as either glyphs (taking the least space but most time to learn), syllabaries (midway between glyphs and alphabets in time and difficulty), alphabets (though you need to write really really tiny if you're using those), or a combination of the above.
Of course, the inking is a separate and special matter, which is why spellbooks cannot be mass produced.
While the default spellbook is not magical in and of itself, the inks and dyes act as conduits for magical power, which is why a wizard who meditates on the contents of their book (perhaps doing some quasi-mathematical calculations to take that day's circumstances into account) can prepare awesome magics, while a (hypothetical) book written entirely in Common with strictly Euclidean diagrams, printed en masse via movable type, is useless to anyone who has moved beyond basic conceptual learning.
These inks are even more expensive if they are meant to contain the energies of a spell in a manner that allows it to be cast without expenditure on the caster's part, such as scrolls.
Such inks include lunar caustic infused with spirit of hartshorn (this results in actual silver particles trapped in the fibers in a glittering, shiny ribbon), to the distillate of treant leaves under azote mixed with the sap of an oak that has stood at a juncture of ley lines for a century or more.
Dyes can come from the Cambian spiniform that only the merfolk can cultivate, the pulp of the sunarbor seed, or the blood of any number of creatures kept from dulling by a coat of bloodleech glaze.
Etc., etc., etc.
Something I didn't ever understand, though, is why higher level spells take up so many pages in a book. If it can fit all on one scroll or a Page of Spell Knowledge, why does it take nine pages in a wizard's book? The only thing I could think of is comparing it to mathematical proofs, but even then, how do you cut that down so very much in other sources?
Scrolls are multiple pages as well sometimes: A scroll holding more than one spell has the same width (about 8-1/2 inches) but is an extra foot or so long for each additional spell.
But the Page of Spell Knowledge is weird.
I can understand that, but that's still an average of one page per spell.
Also, very good ideas, Mark and TN.
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I've always thought of magic as an external force, perhaps it's because of my Forgotten Realms routes.
For arcane magic.. be it a wizard (other other classes that memorizes their spells) they're memorizing the "ritual" or "chant" or whatever it takes for that individual to conjure up a Fireball. That's why they just can't copy another wizard's fireball.. or instantly identify a spell they already know that another is casting. Because the actual casting technique is tailored for the caster.
In such a case, they're way more dedicated to study and lore then a Sorcerer or Bard.. who can just "will" a Fireball into existence. The spontaneous casters are naturally talented... perhaps could even be considered "freaks" in some settings as a result.
Divine magic and it's casters has changed over the editions. But I've always thought of Divine spells as just prayers. I don't like the idea of it being special magic or technique. Just praying and being pious enough to be granted the desired effect by they're god or god's followers.
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To the OP: Imagine that you can understand barely understand a language, when its written in "Print". Now imagine that you are trying to read one page of an incredibly complex scientific theory that you barely understand, while its written in the language you can barely understand, in that language's "Cursive". Now imagine you are trying to read that in an old, cracked mirror, and the ink that scribed it is very faded and hard to see. This is just the beginning of what a wizard is reading.