Difficult question.

With my novels and short stories, I have never written anything except my own passion project stories. All of these are personal to some degree, in a few cases painfully so. I do sometimes respond to fiction prompts, but only if I can connect them to the voices in my head in a meaningful way.

With film reviews, I started writing them about two decades ago purely to send to friends so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself in conversations when asked my opinion on any given film. It rather mushroomed from there.

With everything else I write here, it's a mixture of wanting to make a few extra pennies, but by writing about subjects that interest me.