Writers pretend like they know what they’re doing. They don’t. The ones who say they do are lying or legally obligated to sound confident for their MFA programs. Sometimes we walk into actual furniture. My knee still remembers the time I backed into a table after a plot twist surprised me.
People act like you have to know the plot before you begin. Sure. And I also pretend I read the terms and conditions when I click “agree,” but here we are. Most drafts start with me poking at the keyboard like it’s going to hiss, and then suddenly there’s a character, and then another one, and before I know it they’re arguing about soup. No idea why. They just are. And somehow that usually means I’m on the right track.
The fun part of not knowing what you’re writing is how everything becomes… suspiciously alive. You throw in one random detail—like a guy carrying a giant zucchini for reasons unknown—and boom, now the whole paragraph has attitude. When you outline too tightly, everything becomes polite. Overly behaved. Like those kids at birthday parties who won’t eat cake because they’re “saving room for dinner.” Who wants that in fiction?
Half the time confusion works better than planning. It forces you to actually pay attention. When I don’t know what’s coming next, I read every sentence like it’s a cryptic instruction manual written by a sleep-deprived engineer. And somehow my brain goes, “Oh sure, I can figure this out,” right before leading me directly into a wall. But then on the way down I grab some idea I didn’t know I needed, and hey, that counts. That’s basically my writing process. Confusion with a side of accidental trespassing.
Most days I poke the keyboard like it’s a suspicious animal. Then a character shows up, usually dressed wrong for the situation, and before I even blink they’re arguing with some other character who wasn’t invited. It’s chaos. But a fun variety. Like when you order something online and the package shows up containing… absolutely not what you bought, but somehow it’s better.
The whole delight of not knowing what you’re writing is how fast the sentences start mutating. You toss in one weird detail—say, a guy dragging around a suitcase that makes sloshing noises—and suddenly the whole page feels alive in a way you definitely didn’t authorize. Precision could never.
Outlines feel like those “life hack” videos where someone uses a banana to fix a car engine. It looks efficient, sure, but try doing it yourself and suddenly something is on fire. My brain hates neat plans. If I outline too much, the words behave too politely. And polite sentences make me itchy.
Once I tried starting a very serious, grown-up story. You know, the type you imagine wearing a blazer to write. By paragraph two, some character wandered in holding a broken umbrella indoors and lecturing everyone about cloud conspiracies. And honestly? That moment saved the whole thing. Seriousness is overrated. Chaos does cardio.
And yeah, sometimes I write myself directly into a wall. Full speed. No helmet. But I usually find something interesting stuck in the metaphorical drywall—some throwaway detail I typed by accident that ends up steering everything. Didn’t plan it. Didn’t apologize.
People panic about “losing control of the narrative.” Control? Please. There was never control. The rails everyone’s worried about falling off are imaginary, held together by whatever snacks you ate while drafting. Do I question it? No. The universe handed me a ferret. I say thank you.
And the fear of “what if it doesn’t go anywhere?”—that’s adorable. Most stories don’t go anywhere. They wander around like confused tourists, then eventually bump into something worth keeping. That’s the job. The wandering. The bumping. The accidental discoveries you pretend were intentional when someone asks.
Every book you’ve ever loved probably started as some writer muttering, “I have no idea what this is supposed to be.” Confusion is the engine. Precision is the seatbelt. Feel free to leave the seatbelt off sometimes.
So the next time you sit there stressing about structure or tone or whatever your inner grammar warden is yelling about—just stop.
You don’t need a plan.
You don’t need a flashlight.
Sit in the dark a second.
Your eyes figure it out. Eventually.
Or they don’t, and you write something totally unhinged instead, which honestly is even better.
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.
