I spent years in Taiwan studying traditional Chinese and even at the height of my proficiency there were plenty of rarer logographs that I'd frequently stumble over - only able to draw "blurry approximations" of them depending on my familiarity.
Coming from a phonetic language with only 26 letters, it was such a surreal feeling being able to effortlessly read a character but be unable to reproduce it.
My understanding (which may have been in the previous HN discussion on the topic) is that Chinese people just substitute with a homophone if they're really stuck and native readers can guess by context what the writer meant. Much like fudged spelling like when Americans mix up do and due
Coming from a phonetic language with only 26 letters, it was such a surreal feeling being able to effortlessly read a character but be unable to reproduce it.