I told you all I had I nifty guest post for you today. Especially given that it’s NaNoWriMo month, I find that there’s some really good advice in part one here. As a bonus, there’s also an excerpt from Occupational Hazard coming up tomorrow for you all. Enjoy!
Part I: The Story about writing Occupational Hazard
The story that would over time become Occupational Hazard was originally conceived in the mid-90’s. I would jot the ideas down and plot out different scenes and write dialogue, many of which would eventually prove worthless and would never make it into the book.
In 1999 or so, I would sit down for a timed half-hour a day for a number of days and wound up with 55 double-spaced pages, which pretty much set up the story and would serve as the content for what would eventually become Occupational Hazard’s first nine chapters.
However, my law practice and other responsibilities precluded me from my doing any significant follow-up to those pages until after I retired and signed up for a novel writing course.
I drew upon the story I had started for the content for assignments for that writing course, and both the instructor and I liked what I wrote, and that was enough to prompt me to pick up from where I had left off, fix it up and then work on figuring out and writing the middle and the end of the story.
Over the years, I suffered from writer’s block, primarily fueled by (1) wanting to write the whole thing in one fell swoop, which would leave me frozen, immobilized from the impossibility of doing that, and (2) insecurity from the fear of failing.
To overcome these debilitating forces, I had to take a leap of faith into the unknown, trusting that I would be able to tap the source of inspiration, whatever that is. I also had to trust that by moving a step at a time, everything would eventually come together.
And ideas did come to me and I did manage to proceed systematically toward the finish line, to my great surprise and relief. I can only guess that once I retired from the practice of law, my mind was relieved from the many matters that consumed it while practicing law and it was now free to intently focus on figuring out the succeeding steps of the story
I firmly believe that if I can write a book, anyone else can. I urge those who want to write, just do it! Finish you story! Then let the chips fall where they may.
Part II: Some particulars about Occupational Hazard itself
There is no question that imagination was a huge factor in writing Occupational Hazard. But the book also benefitted from my personal experiences, values that are important to me and wordsmithing that I like to engage in.
There were quite a few incidents from my life that were incorporated into the story. Most were the initial inspirations that my imagination then ran with. However, the story about Jackie Pintero in Chapter 17 was an accurate account of an encounter I had with a classmate, whose name was changed to spare that person embarrassment. Also, Mick’s way of dealing with insects, set forth in Chapter 14, is my proven method of successful extermination.
And many of my characters were inspired by people I know, but only as a starting point, for my imagination would take over and complete the profile. For example, while someone I know was the model for Gordon Gilbert, the model was no way as nasty or devious as Gilbert.
Writing the story also permitted me, among other things, to stress values that are important to me, like the importance for men to respect woman (Chapter 11), or the importance for us to help one another (throughout the book, but in particular Mick’s speech at the end of Chapter 18), or the value of diversity and of not sticking to “our kind” (throughout the book, but especially in Mick’s speech about “our kind” in the last chapter).
I like to wordsmith and in several spots in Occupational Hazard I work in particular phrases of note. Some are risque in nature, so I will leave those to the reader to find. But an obvious example is in Chapter 20, as the phrase in question is also the title to that chapter.
The excerpt from Chapter 18 includes two sentences that I think are good examples of how to speak volumes with only a few words and thereby engage the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Here are those sentences in which Mick states certain ways that he had assisted JBJ’s father:
When this one doctor wasn’t payin’ proper attention to him, I had a conversation with the doctor and adjusted his attitude toward Frank. And when I found out a male nurse mistreated Frank, Pedro had one of his guys make sure the nurse never made that mistake again.
After reading these sentences a reader will wonder how that doctor’s attitude got adjusted and what mistakes were committed by the nurse and what happened to ensure they are not repeated.
Go to Occupational Hazard’s website, www.AlandMickForte.com, for more information about the book, me and other issues related to the story.
Thank you,
Alex S. Avitabile
Alex retired after practicing law for thirty-four years, and Occupational Hazard is his first published work of fiction. Alex is presently working on the second installment of the Al and Mick Forte series, which he hopes to publish in 2019.
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