It’s a Gamble.
If the hand we’re dealt isn’t good enough, we play the long game and bring new ideas to the table. If the odds don’t feel right, we reshuffle our words. If we don’t like what’s on the table, we fold and start again. If we need more to go on, we look closer, hoping for the right reveal. And if we sense there’s something bigger at play, we gamble on instinct—digging, doubling down, until we hit the truth. And if others read it? It might linger—etched into their mind, altering the odds, maybe even changing the way they play the game.
That’s what it means to write—to deal in chance, to stack the deck, to roll the dice and see what takes shape. We don’t just tell stories, we construct realities, bending time, crafting people, places, and possibilities from nothing but thought. And in doing so, we uncover truths—sometimes about the world, sometimes about ourselves. Goddamn gamblers, I tell you!
Even though we often categorize our writing as either fiction or nonfiction—knowing, of course, that the spectrum is far broader—there’s always a sleight of hand. Even in the stories we conjure—those that seem entirely unreal to us—pieces of us slip through. Hidden in the humor and grit, the scenarios, the circumstances of our carefully crafted characters, fragments of who we are often peek through, like a card we didn’t mean to show.
Sometimes, those pieces are exaggerated, placed in situations that force our strengths to emerge—safely, without the real-life stakes. Other times, we unconsciously craft stories that let us feel things we might not otherwise allow ourselves to feel. Writing is a gamble that lets us play with our own ghosts and test our limits after all. We lay our bets, we take our chances, we don’t always know how it’ll land. Sometimes, the story wins. Sometimes, we have to reshuffle the deck and try again. But none of that matters, because it’s the process of the ‘game’ that we love so much.
And maybe this is just me, right now—someone who discovered writing heavily and quickly later in life. It feels novel to me, despite feeling ancient myself! I’m enamored with how it pulls me in, how I can lose myself for hours, spilling my guts, laughing to myself when I write something I probably shouldn’t—weighing the risks of leaving it in. Seeing parts of myself exposed so bluntly, and others that only I can recognize. Noticing how something of myself slipped through, when I thought I was just making it up. Like a bet I didn’t realize I’d placed, only half-aware of the truths I was risking with every word.
My analytical mind definitely plays a role in the way I write. I have a lifetimes worth of perpetually watching and analyzing every move—myself, the world—and I’m realizing that writing gives me a place to channel that. A way to decipher, to create, to make better sense of all the things. A place to lay it down, grieve the losses, or laugh at the wins.
But seriously, how fucking lucky are we, though? That we can do this—entirely through writing. That we can touch something real inside ourselves, even while shaping the imaginary. It’s a gift I bet writers don’t always recognize. Some of us can get caught up in the need to earn, have an audience, to survive off our work—rightfully so, mind you. But beneath all that need, there’s want—desires, hopes, dreams, unspoken thoughts, deeper layers of ourselves waiting to be discovered through our words, or subconscious.
Our stories are a lot like dreams—truths woven through symbolism, desire and myth, like the blood that runs beneath our surface, rarely tasted by others. But as writers? If we choose to dig into what our creative minds pull into our written reality, fiction andnonfiction, there’s gold there. Even if it never gets published. Even if no one else ever reads a goddamn word. Even when we lose. Sometimes, especially so.
Not a bad gig.
And maybe that’s the real love of it all—forget a cat’s nine lives. Writing lets us live a thousand more! We shuffle the deck, roll the dice, stack the odds however we want. We explore the roads not taken, confront what haunts us, and immortalize what we love. It allows us to rewrite, reframe, reshape whatever the fuck we want, however we want it. To tell the truth in ways people are ready to hear. Or not. Or sometimes, just in ways we are finally ready to admit to ourselves.
And we do all of that—both intentionally and subconsciously—through writing. The gamble and the trick, the risk and the reveal. A gambler never lays all their cards on the table, but a writer? We leave a few face up and let the reader make their call.
What a fucking thing, to be able to do that.
