Writing

Posted on by Opher

Writing

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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?

8 thoughts on “Writing”

  1. I have heard it said that most people’s lives have a good book in them and it sounds reasonable. Some celebrities feeling they lack the English skills to write a biography employ professional authors to write the book for them. Often those celebrities are successful since large numbers want to know just what makes them tick. We are interested in the famous and outstanding not so much in the Joe Bloggs of the world. The media reflect our interests and give us the information we crave to brighten up our lives. Lasting literature is often about the struggle of Mr Average to make his or her way in the world, their trials and tribulations , successes and failures. It reflects life as it is not life as we wish it could be. Mills and Boon is popular but it’s here today and gone tomorrow ; written just to titillate the romantic dreams of escapists.
    Perhaps all literature and art is a form of escape , a relief from the humdrum world of reality.

      1. Unquestionably it enriches but does it blind us to the essential facts of life. I look at the total devastation of the great hurricane and I hear in the other ear talk about the great importance of super fast broadband. I watch the gorgeous figure of Miss Elizabeth Bennett being stared at by the dark eyes of Mr Darcy and forget the desperate plight of the poor in Edwardian Britain. I am lambasted with the importance that men must travel from Manchester to London in an hour and a half or the country will collapse, it was said it would collapse when children were forbidden to work in the mines. Every section and part of the globe has its own view of what is urgent and within each community what is urgent for the rich is not at all urgent for the poor.

  2. “I know that writing for yourself is indulgent…” I don’t believe that for a minute. Writing is necessary to retain one’s sanity!!! (And it’s cheaper than a shrink!)

    1. But it’s not good for your family. And some would argue that it hasn’t worked on the sanity level either! But it is cheaper than a shrink.

    2. Well everyone has their own way of retaining sanity.
      ‘Twould ring the bells of Heaven
      The wildest peal for years ,
      If Parson lost his senses
      And people came to theirs,
      And he and they together
      Knelt down with angry prayers
      For tamed and shabby tigers
      And dancing dogs and bears,
      And wretched, blind pit ponies,
      And little hunted hares.’

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