Writing Credo: For Profit or Personal Enrichment?

Every writer fantasizes gaining a world-wide audience.

What does it profit writers, should they pen poetry about the planet and the plight of humankind, through truth, wisdom, metaphor, malapropism, wisdom, wit, humor, and sarcasm, and lose their audience?

Should the greatest audience numbers be among those who hunger, and are willing to pay the most, for stories of murder, horror, the inhumane, gruesomeness of war, stories brimming with graphic sexual content, story content glorifying man's most cruel, base, primal, animal nature, then, are writers not bound to give the people what they want?

Why waste ink on topics such as clean air and water, global warming, friendship, courtship, fulfilling relationships, how to become our better - or better yet, our best - selves, if the audience and the money are not there? That is, unless the writer's motivation for writing is not solely based on widest audience and for greatest monetary profit.

A battle is fought within the heart and mind of this author, writer, poet, each time I pick up a pen and sit down to write. Who am I writing for, and why? Simply for monetary profit, or to champion principle? For dollar, or decency? To add to the ever rising literary trash heap, or purposed to make a positive difference in some reader's life? I believe that profits targeted by one's writing is something personal to each writer.

My writing credo is simple and straightforward. I choose to write what I can comfortably live with after having written it. I'm fully aware it may never be universally accepted, make me popular, rich, or famous - at least, not on this planet - perhaps on the next. After all, here on this one, I am but a creative soul passing through.