Before writing a story, there’s usually a strange larval phase where you technically produce nothing while behaving like somebody haunted by decorative ghosts. Outsiders call this procrastination.
Writers call this “process” because otherwise we’d have to admit we spent four hours researching 1997 vending machine designs instead of finishing Chapter Three.
The draft before the draft is chaos wearing reading glasses.
It starts innocently. You open Spotify “for atmosphere.” Dangerous sentence. Thirty-seven minutes later you’re naming playlists things like DUST MOTEL HEARTBREAK or songs my protagonist hears while bleeding near industrial fencing. Half the tracks are unusable. One is just whale noises layered over Balkan synth music. Perfect. Essential creative fuel somehow.
No pages written.
Spiritually exhausted anyway.
Then comes image collection. Writers love collecting images for stories they have not earned yet. These are random images of everything. Disconnected, haphazard, slapdash. You are looking at them, trying to find a link, a link that would join the dots. Suddenly, you are a Scotland Yard veteran looking for clues of serial killer.
“This one feels narratively important.”
Brother it’s a lamp.
And God help you if Wikipedia enters the room. That site turns writers into raccoons trapped inside air vents. You search “how long hypothermia takes” and emerge two hours later knowing obscure details about Venetian glassmaking, Cold War submarine accidents, and the diet of medieval monks.
Meanwhile your document remains empty except for: Chapter One.
Which honestly starts feeling passive aggressive after a while.
But here’s the annoying part: some of this nonsense actually matters.
Creative preparation rarely looks productive in real time. It looks like pacing circles around your kitchen while reheating the same cup of coffee four consecutive times. It looks like lying on the floor listening to one specific song until your emotional organs loosen slightly. It looks like muttering dialogue fragments while buying onions.
Writers spend enormous amounts of time becoming emotionally porous enough to hear the story correctly.
Unfortunately this process resembles a nervous breakdown from outside the window.
My favorite pre-writing behavior is the ceremonial walk. You leave the desk dramatically as if exiting a hostage negotiation. Then you wander around the neighborhood pretending you’re “thinking structurally” when really you’re imagining your future author interview after the book wins imaginary awards.
Very healthy behavior. Extremely grounded.
At some point during these walks you’ll encounter a tiny meaningless detail that suddenly unlocks the story. A broken shopping cart beside wet grass. Somebody arguing in a parking lot. The smell of oranges near a garbage bin. Stories are weird little thieves. They grab texture first, logic later.
That’s why preparation gets messy.
You aren’t outlining so much as developing atmospheric allergies.
And honestly, avoidance and preparation are cousins wearing each other’s jackets. Hard to separate them sometimes. There is a moment — dangerous moment — where research becomes a fake productivity casino. You start believing the story improves every time you collect another aesthetic photograph of rusted motel signage.
It does not.
At a certain point the draft wants actual sentences instead of emotional support Pinterest boards.
This is painful because writing the draft destroys the perfect imaginary version living in your skull. Before drafting, the story exists as pure potential. Limitless. Gorgeous. The moment you write page one, reality arrives carrying cinder blocks.
Characters speak incorrectly. Scenes wobble. Metaphors crawl into traffic and die.
So naturally the brain invents rituals to postpone this heartbreak.
“I should probably learn more about Romanian train stations first.”
No you shouldn’t. Your protagonist lives in Ohio.
But the strange rituals still matter. Some stories need fermentation time. They need ceiling-staring hours. They need the writer sitting motionless feeling vaguely hunted by an emotion without a noun attached to it yet.
People imagine writing happens when fingers hit keyboard. Yes, sometimes. But mostly not. It, the subconscious, is that monkey with the car keys. Completely unstable. Occasionally brilliant.
And eventually, after enough pacing and playlist-building and fake productivity gymnastics, a sentence appears. Usually inconveniently. In the shower. On a bus. While brushing your teeth like a depressed Victorian orphan.
The sentence arrives carrying the rest of the draft folded inside it. Then the real work starts.
Unfortunately.
Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.
