In the end I answered the question by realizing that I had no choice. I couldn't do anything else. When I tried, I got so depressed I couldn't stand it. So when I wrote yet another novel or screenplay that I couldn't sell, I had no choice but to write another after that. The truth was, I was enjoying myself. Maybe nobody else liked the stuff I was doing, but I did. I was learning. I was getting better. The work became, in its own demented way, a practice. It sustained me, and it sustains me still.
