Some nights I think I may end up face down in a pool -- bobbing to-and-fro in a sea of tiny black letters -- like alphabet soup. But I digress. Another story for another day. I don't talk about my writing ventures to my friends. When I did -- told them what I'm writing -- a completed screenplay under my belt and working on others normally drew the same response... "oh." A flat "oh" at that. And that's it. Not that I was looking for an ass-kissing session... but I could feel the "hack... wanna-be... what-are-you-thinking" vibe... seeping from their pores. A flat... "oh." Three-hundred plus pages to tell a story most folks understand -- Understand ninety. The romanticism of the struggling novelist draws many a fan. Let's hope, someday, the struggling screenwriter can draw the same as well. The lonely nights banging out our hearts and souls behind tiny black letters within a confined medium. Someday... someday WE will be romanticized -- paid... And respected.

@Courtney: I know that feeling. I was sure that Limitless was written by a screenwriter who wished for a magic pill. Turns out I was wrong. But what movies we'd write with a mind of perfect clarity and focus.

Adem, your comment reminds me of one of my favorite Charlie Kaufman movies Adaptation as that features a screenwriter (actually two of them if you include Charlie's brother Donald who wrote and sold a spec script). Charlie aspires to art and wants to write an "Orchid Thief" script that... well, here are his words: "It's just I don't want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood product. Like, an orchid heist movie or something... I don't want to cram in sex or car chases or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end." And yet that is precisely what ends up happening in Act III... in order to salvage the movie. Adaptation may be the best example yet of a screenwriter struggling against the tug of commerce to find art... only to have commerce win out in the end. I love that movie.

I heard once that William Goldman, arguably the dean of contemporary American screenwriters, referred to himself as a "novelist." I remember reading something by him where he claimed that it was critical for a screenwriter to have another form of artistic expression so they could balance out their 'pure' creative needs and those of screenwriting which invariably have to be concerned with the needs of the marketplace and the voices of dozens of people providing notes and critiques. My good friend Tom Benedek (screenwriter of "Cocoon") said much the same thing last night in a live Q&A we did with my class at UNC. Novels or screenplays, bottom line we are both dealing with plot, characters, theme, dialogue, subplots, pace, tone, and on and on. And I would dare any of us to find a novelist nowadays who aspires to be published by any major publishing house who is not concerned with story concept, genre, and market viability. I've consulted with enough novelists and non-fiction writers to know how difficult it is for them to grasp screenwriting, so challenging to say so much with so little. And at the end of the day, it's all storytelling. Good luck, Atlanta, in your creative endeavors!