What's the relationship between Wu Cheng'en and The Journey to the West?

Wu Cheng'en is the author of The Journey to the West.

Wu Cheng'en (about 1500-1582), male, whose name is Ruzhong, is from Sheyang Mountain. Han nationality, from Shanyang County, Huai 'an Prefecture (now Huai 'an District, Huai 'an City, Jiangsu Province). Wu Cheng'en moved to Huai 'an House (now Huai 'an District, Huai 'an City, Jiangsu Province) after his ancestral home in Gaodian, Tongcheng, Anhui Province. The Journey to the West, an outstanding novelist in China in Ming Dynasty, is one of the four classical novels of China.

The Records of Huai 'an Prefecture recorded that he was "quick and wise, read widely and wrote for poetry". However, his scientific examination was unfavorable, and he didn't make up for the "year-old tribute student" until middle age, and then he lived in Nanjing for a long time and subsidized his family by selling literature. In his later years, due to his poor family, he became a county magistrate in Changxing. Because he didn't like the darkness of officialdom, he quickly resigned angrily and died of poverty. After the age of 30, the anecdotes he searched have been "hidden in his chest" and he has a creative plan. At the age of 50, I wrote about the first ten times of The Journey to the West, and then I was interrupted for many years. It was not until he resigned in his later years and returned to his hometown that he was able to formally create The Journey to the West.