Writing

I prefer writing to reading and I love reading! My head fills up with thoughts and ideas that I am driven to write down. As soon as I have committed them to paper I am free of them. I find the creativity essential to my mental well-being. I become elated when I write. I love making up stories.

My wife says I am obsessive. I would prefer to see myself as driven. Writing is a compulsion.

I have been writing books for forty four years. I doubt that I will ever stop.

I do not write in order to become ‘successful’. That is not the motivation. I know it will never make me rich and famous. I write in order to revel in the joy of communication. I write to attempt to capture the thoughts that are in my head, commit them to the tangible symbols of words and understand them better myself. I write because I am an idealist who wants to change the world for the better; who believes that we can make it better and who believes in the power of words. I write for the sheer joy of it.

I write for myself. I do not write for a market. Because of that I am totally unrestrained. My work is often shocking, extreme and pornographic. So be it. That is what comes out.

I know that writing for yourself is indulgent and does not achieve the stated aims of improving the world and communicating with others. This is a conundrum. I know that if I was hopelessly stranded on a desert island I would still write. Yet I also know that any creative person requires an audience. I need an audience in order for the process to be complete. To be completely satisfied I need to know that people are reading my books. That is why I have published fifteen of them so far.

Being in the luxurious position of being retired with a pension that enables me to live I can and am devoting myself to rewriting all those books that have come out of my type-writer over these last four and a half decades. I have the time, energy and inclination. I am enjoying myself.

Hopefully I will ruffle a few feathers, gain a few friends, shock a number of people, and have a great deal of fun in the process.

Sometimes I write graphically about torture, environmental degradation, exploitation and war. I write in the hopes that these things will improve. I want to shine a spotlight on them. I write because I am angry. I write so that they we can raise our awareness and sensibilities. I write in order that those things will not happen.

I write about sex because I think our culture is hung up about it. Sex is natural. It should not be taboo or embarrassing. We have made it so.

I write about the future as a warning.

I write to relieve the pressure cooker in my head and because I love doing it.

I hope you might enjoy being my audience.

My books are available on Amazon under Opher Goodwin. Why don’t you have a look and see what you think?