I spent today at the Writing Industries Conference in Loughborough. For the most part I came away inspired. In particular, I was taken with the opening speech by writer Graham Joyce, which could pretty much have been designed with me in mind. He spoke about the challenge of writing for an age in which traditional print publishing is on its way out — whether or not people in the industry choose to accept it — and online media present whole new opportunities for writers who can capitalise on its possibilities.

Graham’s stance was captured in his suggestion that there are “opportunities for the industrious writer who is able to diversify”, reiterating that statement by saying that the twin themes of the new era are diversification and independence. Writers are often being offered advances a quarter of what was the case a few years ago, and Amazon sells 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical ones, where the same titles are compared. Online drama Kate Modern attracted 66 million hits thanks to its link with social networking site Bebo, and was only pulled when one of its partners, AOL, got greedy. This is a new world, and there are no set rules it operates by. Graham’s strategy, very much echoing the themes of my own thinking recently, is to adapt and find ways to capitalise on three or more of the income streams available to writers, if they’re so inclined.

And that last part is the contentious bit, where some people are concerned. More than I’ve experienced it before, there seemed to be two camps at the conference. On the one hand, those keen to support themselves through the monies available to them through writing. On the other, those whose hearts are in serving the community. And some of what’s been said about this apparent dichotomy is pretty ugly — one participant commented thus on Twitter: “Every time I hear the word ‘monetize’ in a conversation about community creativity I hear the word ‘cuntify’.” Nice.

This simplistic dualism doesn’t take all kinds of things into account. Like, as with people such as myself, many of those aspiring to support themselves through creativity have already been active in community arts of one sort or another. I’ve been there, done that, with — among other projects — a theatre company aiming to do work about learning difficulties in schools. And found that what we wanted to do was a no-goer commercially speaking, since Nottingham Council’s theatre-in-education team offered subsidised rates that we couldn’t compete with. So we didn’t: we did our shows for some years, to much acclaim, and with support from charities that barely covered our costs. When it came to divvying up the monies in the bank account when it all came to an end, we each had around £100.

So: when you dismiss writers wanting to make money, you’re dismissing people who may well have done more than their bit for community arts and education. Also, remember that advocates of arts in the community are the ones looking for jobs in same. I’ve encountered no end of writers in residence, creators working with marginalised groups, facilitators, drama therapists and so forth, and I believe that’s a perfectly good way to be spending your time. But not everyone has the networking and workshopping skills needed to get such work, or the desire to acquire them. Some people just want to write, and earn money for it. And that’s fine, too.

I’ve got a foot in both camps here, and I suspect that’s the way it’ll remain. Even with the potentially lucrative multiplatform work I’m planning there’s a utopian element in terms of the story content that I want to inspire kids with as I in turn was inspired by the characters whose adventures I followed. And if that works out, I intend to give money to charities from the profits generated.

Suggesting that writers are either moneygrabbing or community-minded is reductionist bullshit, and it makes me sad to hear people talking in such terms. Especially when the future is going to be challenging for us all, and we can help one another to prosper.