Heh. Yes, I think we seriously overestimate the extent to which we have to work stuff out for the story to work.

Nor is it the only thing we get hung up on that readers don't pay nearly as much attention to as we think they do. The more I write, the more hyper-aware I become of how few sentence structures there are, how often I use particular (entirely common and invisible) phrasings, etc. It's a professional hazard.