I want to be a star, but I can't dance and I have a face like a horse.

Writing a screenplay and selling it to Hollywood has replaced writing the Great American Novel as the homely little guy's lottery ticket to fame and fortune. However, just like a real lottery ticket, your odds of making it to the big time are nonexistent. And if lottery tickets are a government tax on stupidity, writing a screenplay is a worse sucker bet.

A lottery ticket costs a buck, but a script could cost you a year or more of your life, damage your personal relationships, and might even cost you your sanity. If you don't believe me, ask that naked guy wandering the streets screaming at everyone about UFOs and the coming end of the world--he's probably talking about his script.

If I write a script, people will listen to me and respect my ideas.
Not a chance. You may be God in the world of your script, controlling people's lives, traveling back and forth through time, moving mountains with a wave of your pen, but once you sell your script, or even get other people involved (it is a collaborative enterprise after all, you won't have a choice) you instantly become a mere mortal again. And not a mortal like Alexander the Great, Albert Einstein, or Donald Trump, but someone more like that guy that gets coffee for everyone in the conference room and flinches when anyone talks loud directly at him.

I don't want to work, I just want to write.
Oh you sad fool, don't you know writing is harder than "real" work? It will drink your blood, eat your heart, fracture your bones, blemish your skin, render you sterile, destroy your sanity (see above) and extinguish your soul. On a daily basis. Writing is like being a kid in gym class running past your limit, with legs wobbling and lungs burning, and when you have nothing left, your gym teacher (aka your muse) screams at you to run even faster. Some days you do.

If you think about how you spend your day at the office now, chances are that you are not using every bit of your human potential. Making copies or filling out cover sheets on your TPS reports is not your shot at greatness and immortality. But writing is, so the stakes are much higher and the price is infinite. It's a no-limit Texas Hold'em Poker match, and Death is on the other side of the table holding almost all the chips. Are you sure you want to be "all in?"

Of course, if you just want to be a hack screenwriter, the bad news is that writing becomes just another jobby job again. I mean, go to a screenwriting panel, and listen to your screenwriting heroes’ whine.

I need therapy, bad.
Please don't ask me to read your script. Please don't even tell me about your script. In fact, don't even look at me that way. Just stop right now; I don't want to have to hit you over the head with my shoe. What you need to do is write a long letter. Don't worry about proper screenplay formatting. Pour out all the wrongs your family and the world have perpetrated on you onto those pages, wet the envelope glue with your tears, seal it, and put it under your pillow next to your diary. You'll feel better soon, trust me.

I like poverty, rejection, and humiliation.
Well, then do I have a job for you! Sell all your stuff, move to LA, grow a pony tail (only if you are balding), get a job waiting tables, set up "meetings" with other waiters, and you can be a screenwriter. You can figure out the rest once you get there.

Finally, there is only one reason to write a screenplay, (and once you know it, you will be guaranteed success almost instantly).
Check out my column in the next issue of Imagine for the rest of this article--and no, I'm not selling a seminar, and this final reason has nothing to do with "writing from the heart," "telling the story you have to tell," or "writing what only you can write." I mean, get real.