One thing that's always kept me writing - no matter how much money I make or don't make - is the enjoyment that I get from the writing process. Even if I never sell another script I'm still getting something out of the experience because I'm working on projects where I enjoy the process.

One thing I learned early on was that you have to make sure that worst case scenario isn't too bad. In other words assume the script won't sell and make sure you're still going to get something out of it.

I've been in many situations where I've written scripts that I was only half-way interested in or I've made changes to one of my scripts that I didn't believe in all to satisfy a producer. The producer would make big promises which most of the time never materialized, in which case I was left with absolutely nothing. So I've really made a conscious choice to try and only work on scripts that I'm really interested in, that way when they don't sell I still got something out of the experience.

Ashley at SellingYourScreenplay.com

Because I know I have some great stories that the right person would be happy to make into a movie. Plus, I love writing!

The stories in my head have turned into a curse. They aren't mine and I don't know where they are coming from. If I get them down on paper maybe they will stop bothering me.

Or maybe I just want to make my mom happy.

Thanks for the great answer, Scott, that clarified things greatly. Of course I'm going to keep writing no matter how bad the market is. It's just something I feel compelled to do.

Y'know I actually figured out an answer to this question, one that I ask myself regularly, the idea of why keep writing scripts when the market, if you can call it that, is such a locked down morass of chaos and silence?

Time.

I've been doing this too long. I actually feel as though I've built something up, both internally and externally. Some innate understanding of the form and an ability to translate the images and their corresponding stories in my head into white-space filled pages that could certainly become moving pictures.

Also, everyone I know knows me as "that screenwriting guy." Sometimes that's a curse but more often than not it's been a blessing.

It's not like any other art form is any easier to make a living at or without their own gaping abyss of nothingness. The music biz? Please... DOA. Painting? Besides that starving artist show in the basement of a nearby Holiday Inn, good luck. Novels? Talk about an industry in trouble!

So it's movies for me. It always has been. It probably always will be.

That notion both depresses me and exhilarates me.

It's complex, eh?

First and foremost, anyone who does anything should LOVE what they do. I've been a professional writer and made a good living my entire life. The truth is, I would have happily worked for a fraction of what I've made, only because this is all I ever wanted to do and it's fun for me, not "a job." Now, I want to write spec movie scripts full-time (and am doing just that) -- and my first script got optioned.
All I need to know is that a few newbie screenwriters break the code every year and sell a spec script. That means it can be done. That, combined with a genuine passion for doing it, will bring results, I believe -- IF you craft a truly great script. Unfortunately, it's that limitation -- and not studio appetitites for material -- that causes the long odds. But they are beatable.

I like to write.

Honestly, I wouldn't know how to stop writing but since you asked, I'd say what keeps me going is the small successes I've had along the way. Sure, I haven't sold a spec to a big production company but I've written many shorts that have made it to the screen and continue to get work in the small market that I live in (films get made outside of Hollywood too!). It also helps that I make my living writing commercials and direct marketing videos as that allows me to see words translated to the screen every day.

I will sell my script. I will sell my script. I will sell my script. I will...

Go to the top of the hollywood hills and gaze out at the city. Imagine a little dot surfacing above every house where an aspiring screenwriter is working on his spec. Now out of those hundreds of dots, think seventy of them will actually sell that work. Now think of yourself as one of those seventy.

It can be done. To me, there are only several 'genuises' in hollywood who you'll never be better than. Everyone else is just the same as you...someone with a take on the world and the patience and determination to write it into a movie.

Simply put: There's nothing else to be doing. I was born for it.