JF – Writer-At-Large
Jerry Flattum – Writer-At-Large
Every writer pursues personal ventures whether employed by others or not. We develop our skills by exploring deep dark caves and going where no human has gone before…and probably for a very good reason. So, while I write songs, screenplays, eBooks, blogs and articles, I am most certainly available for hire.
I specialize in the entertainment industry, convergence of technology and entertainment, and especially the music business. I can write just about anything: Songs, screenplays, Ops/Ed, news, interviews, content for websites, eBooks, blogs, articles, blurbs, one-liners, taglines and some technical writing. Along with entertainment I love writing about culture, society, health, politics and anything to do with the future.
During my Masters in Liberal Studies program, a focus area was Innovation Studies, a twist on what is usually called “Futures-based Studies.” The director of the program and my mentor, Dr. Arthur Harkins, coined the phrase and was a significant influence on my ability to envision the future.
There’s a ton of content on my site, from original songs to screenplays to the creation of the Entertainment Cyberscope (EC), a portal & blog for all things behind-the-scenes in entertainment. The link leads to an Introduction, and the EC is being built on a dedicated domain: entertainmentcyberscope.com (under construction as of Feb 2012).
In addition to what you find here, more on my history is available in my bio section: JF – Writer.
All my published and unpublished writing is available for review under the Writing category on the site you happen to be on:
Currently have a column on Technorati called, Convergence In Entertainment.
I’m set to launch my first eBook also called, Convergence In Entertainment. The Technorati column serves as support and promotional vehicle for the eBook. The link leads to a 1st draft, with a final draft coming up in Feb 2012.
Songwriting is my 1st love, screenwriting my 2nd, and, well, I love writing period. I was hired to write my 1st screenplay in Las Vegas circa 2005 and since then I’ve finished a new treatment for a full length Sci-Fi action/adventure called Time Travelers In The Celestial Age. I’ve yet to upload the new treatment and rewrite the script accordingly. But you can read an Intro to what the story is about and peruse a musical version I wrote as my Masters thesis.
JerryFlattum.com is also being re-designed, with plans to splinter a single site into multiple sites.
Contact me via this site or email me at: jerryflattum@gmail.com
Following is a more detailed excursion into who I am as a writer, reprinted from Thumbtack:
Q. What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?
A. Don’t try to get me for cheap, or should I say, don’t think cheaply. If you have a restricted budget, I understand. We can work within your set budget.
Some writing is more superficial and can be measured in terms of hourly rates or word count.
However, writing is a very special talent and requires immense intelligence, creativity and skill. Great care goes into word choice, and if I’m choosing words specifically designed to promote someone else or their products/services, I’m being very respectful of who you are and expect the same in return.
Writing involves persuasion and vision. Knowing how to persuade–and to use words to do it–is far more rare than it is common.
Having vision means being a forward thinker, finding innovative ways to problem-solve, and involves insight in negotiating the future.
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Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?
A. Writing is a rhetorical art. The foundations for writing were laid out by Plato and Aristotle. In other words, when writing is a rhetorical device, it is being used to persuade.
Some people think writing is a means of expression, and in the case of fiction (songwriting, screenwriting, novel writing), that’s true. But, more experienced writers set out to persuade their audience/readers, even when writing fiction.
I want to know more about storytelling. What is a story? Why are stories so effective throughout history as means of communication?
From sitting around a campfire hearing ghost stories to Hollywood blockbusters and NY Times best selling lists, stories resonate in ways not clearly understood.
In screenwriting, a story is defined as: “A flawed character overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to reach a desired goal.”
I want to learn more how audiences–and readers–identify with stories and what it is that excites, informs and lifts the spirit.
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Q. What questions should a consumer ask to hire the right service professional?
A. Consumers need to ask about experience, communication skills, and creativity.
Experience is the first criteria for hiring a service professional. Documented work speaks for itself. However, experience is not always a measure of what someone can do in the future.
How well an individual communicates is critical to knowing if the professional has trouble-shooting and problem solving abilities. Most consumers have unique challenges that require solutions beyond routine or ordinary.
Creativity and reason is the perfect combination for getting a job done. Creativity is not always easy to measure. Creativity does not just mean painting a picture, decorating a room or playing a musical instrument.
Being creative in business means understanding how business is evolving. Being creative means having the skills and vision to negotiate–create–the future.
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Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?
A. What purpose does the writing serve? Are you simply trying to populate your website with articles? Or are you trying to sell products/services?
Words are meant to entertain, inform and persuade. It’s important clients and buyers know as much as possible about what it is they want to say.
Sometimes buyers have an idea, but don’t quite know what to say or how to say it. If this is the case, they need to be upfront with the writer.
Writing is highly flexible and creative. I can say what I need to say in one sentence or in a book. Some buyers are verbal while others are more visceral or visual. This needs to be communicated as well.
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Q. Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?
A. I care very much about my audience, whether I’m writing a serious article about global or personal issues or helping to promote/advertise products and services.
The blogs on my site, 2 primary and 2 mini-blogs, demonstrate insight, uniqueness and creativity.
There is nothing like the Entertainment Cyberscope-Portal and Blog. The EC-Portal is a comprehensive and annotated guide to all things “Behind-The-Scenes” in entertainment.
Emphasis is on the phrase, “Behind-The-Scenes.” The EC-Portal is not your usual E! Entertainment Tonight celebrity gossip.
Celestial Age, the 2nd primary blog, offers a vision of the future while seeking solutions to both Global and Personal Issues covering a wide range of topics. It takes a holistic approach to problem solving.
My Songs and Production music, although in pre-production, communicate originality and power.
My eBooks are visions of the future exploring and examining innovative areas exemplified by the titles, “Convergence In Entertainment,” “Personal Strategic Enterprise, “Holistic Song Creation,” “Global Strategic Thinking.”
The same kind of striving for originality in my own work is the same striving I bring to creating content for others.
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Q. What do you like most about your job?
A. Working from home in the company of my ferrets is great, ha! Actually, writing is mobile. With a laptop and my digital recorder, I can write from anywhere.
Writing for the Internet is particularly satisfying since you can see immediate results. There’s no waiting around for print schedules.
Most importantly, I have the opportunity to communicate to a global audience.
Through words I can entertain, excite, inform and hopefully lift the spirit by new ways of thinking and by envisioning and creating the future.
I have a motto: What are you doing to make the world a better place? As a writer, I hope to live up to my motto.
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Q. What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What’s your answer?
A. By reviewing samples of my writing most customers/clients can readily see I’m an excellent writer.
The next thing they want to know is how Internet savvy I am, that is, do I know how to use keywords, do I understand SEO strategies, and can I upload posts and articles using proprietary applications/software.
The answer is yes. However, SEO is highly complex, and I’m still learning.
In the launch and design of my own website, I’ve gained considerably expertise in how writing is used online.
By working with WordPress, I’ve learned new skills in how to upload, format and present content of all kinds, from Word and PDF documents to mp3′s and photo viewers.
Customers might want to know if I know where the Internet is headed, since knowing the future of the Internet plays a critical role in the development of websites and how businesses evolve.
I incorporated my first company in Jan 2011 called, Entertainment Cyberscope, Inc. I know what it means to launch a startup.
The company revolves around the creation of entertainment content, so I need to know what new forms of entertainment are being offered online and what changes to expect in coming months/years.
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Q. Do you have a favorite story from your work?
A. I experienced a dramatic turning point in my professional life as a writer when I was asked to write a guide on Texas Hold’em poker. I don’t know a thing about poker.
In fact, I hate gambling (no offense to those who love gambling).
But, I have an amazing ability to conceptualize and grasp the essence as well as processes and methods involved in just about any endeavor or activity, from science to entertainment.
I also pride myself on performing extensive research for most subjects that challenge me. I cover the entire spectrum of A-Z before narrowing or “drilling” down into a specific area.
In writing a guide on poker, the trick was to first remove my prejudices and biases and think like a gambler. It’s an acting talent I developed as a performer in bands and on stage.
The next challenge was to write in my own words the information I garnished from other sources. I certainly didn’t want to plagiarize. Consequently, I had a couple of professional poker players review the guide before I submitted it. It worked. I was paid excellently.
And wouldn’t you know, I can’t find the guide anywhere on the Internet. I think you’ll see my name listed as having written a guide, but no guide to be found. This too was a valuable lesson in writing for the Internet. Websites come and go and what you write is most certainly not always etched in stone.
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Q. What do you wish customers knew about you or your profession?
A. Some people think songwriting, freelance writing, book writing and screenwriting are different professions. In most cases, many successful writers have proven this is so.
Very few writers are capable of crossing over from one kind of writing endeavor into another. I have spent considerable time trying to understand what it is that led me from writing a journal to writing songs, articles, books and screenplays.
Ideally, I would like customers to understand the connection between my ventures and adventures, how one thing led to another, so to speak.
The first thing to understand is that being creative in multiple areas is not necessarily a linear process. Being creative means being both linear and non-linear.
Linearly, writing songs led to working in musical theater. Musicals involve writing words, music and a “book,” or the story.
Theater leads to film, so stage plays become screenplays.
Freelance writing was originally a means of earning income while developing as a musician, performer and songwriter. When I was offered my first book contract, non-fiction writing was taken to a whole new level.
Words and music is no longer a struggle of one or the other, but a beautiful marriage allowing for higher levels of creativity.
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Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?
A. My first foray into writing was through my journal. Journals are powerful ways to develop style, explore new ideas and methods, and especially critical in learning the difference between what to write and what not to write based on a given audience.
A journal stretches the imagination.
And of course, it’s also a way to manage practical matters of writing, like documenting facts, figures and dates and especially capturing those great ideas that are so easy to forget.
The next area of writing was songwriting. Songwriting took me into an entirely new world of expression. Form and structure and how words matched melodies involve strict guidelines.
while journals are open-ended, songwriting involves creating content within a set structure and with a defined purpose.
Songwriting is far more than just putting words to music or learning how to find clever rhymes. Songwriting is storytelling. And oddly enough, based on the the number one rule in writing–be concise–songwriting teaches you how to be concise.
Writing for a newspaper was the next experiment in writing and is also based on structure, word count and intent.
Newspaper, magazine and writing online gave me the opportunity to say things in narrative form, where logic and reason play an important role in what you say and how you say it.
Fiction and non-fiction are two sides of the same coin: A quest for truth, understanding, communicating and sharing a vision.
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Q. What are your most common types of jobs?
A. The most common types of jobs for me are informative articles that educate without being academic, mostly falling into the “How-To” range.
Being paid as a blogger is now taking precedence over the freelancing of single articles, since many websites and services want to establish greater communication with their audiences.
The recent develops of long and short form narrative journalism are significantly upping the ante for continuous writing.
We are moving from a terrestrial print world of the 20th century into new forms of writing in the 21st century.
Opinion writing is becoming very popular but not in the Ops/Ed sense of traditional newspaper writing. Opinions are usually expressed in an ongoing blog and backed by experience within a specialized field.
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Q. Tell us about a recent job you did that you are particularly proud of.
A. I had been away from freelance writing for a few years while focusing on songwriting and recording. It was the launch of my website that got me back into writing.
I first wanted to showcase all my previously published work. I new this was the first requirement in finding new work as a writer.
I also found a new voice through blogging. I created several blogs as experiments before finally settling on the key blogs now featured on my website: JerryFlattum.com.
Writing online–creating a website–unleashed a new power of writing I never had before. Although I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, launching a website opened many doors into new areas of writing, such as exploring long and short form narrative journalism.
By doing my homework, writing and re-writing, and reading incessantly what other writers were doing online, the work paid off and eventually led to writing an eBook for FastPencil.com and being accepted as a writer for Technorati.com, one of the most important blogging websites on the Internet.
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Q. Do you do any sort of continuing education to stay up on the latest developments in your field?
A. Absolutely. Writing is learning while doing. Writing is not a static skill but an constantly evolving one.
Quite simply, the more you write the better you get at it.
The Internet opened up an entirely new distribution channel and new means of expression with a whole new set of rules.
Those rules revolve around a more global audience and always writing with SEO and social media in mind.
There are far many more writers online than there were in the terrestrial realm, and many of these writers are taking insight and vision to new heights.
In addition to learning through writing, I’m also pursuing a 2nd Masters, Music for New Media, Academy of Art, San Francisco (an online program).
I currently have a Masters in Liberal Studies and a self-designed BS in Songwriting, both degrees from the University of Minnesota.
I’m a returning adult student.
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Q. What are the latest developments in your field? Are there any exciting things coming in the next few years or decade that will change your line of business?
A. Writing is evolving and shape-shifting into shapes and forms far different than what the world experienced in print during the 20th century.
Many professional writers are now referring to these changes in terms of long and short form narrative journalism.
The very nature of words changes dramatically in the shift from static to dynamic. Online, words become interactive, requiring engagement beyond the passivity of reading.
You Tube proves the visual is often more powerful than the written word, something Hollywood and TV have known for decades. The Internet is a visual medium now, not just with videos, but all kinds of graphics, from 3D to Flash.
However, visual does not replace the written word. The goal is not to pit word against visual but see the relationship symbiotically.
Before the Internet, and still, journalists either become or work with photographers. Now, with the Internet, writers need to understand the visual impact of websites and how to make videos and use graphics to accompany what they write.
It becomes a holistic presentation of words, graphics, multimedia and interactivity.
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Q. Describe your most recent project, what it involved, how much it cost, and how long it took.
A. My website took months to launch, undergoes continuous evolution, and involves more writing than I’m sure I’ll ever be called upon to do by others.
The site includes previously published work, which had to be scanned and then uploaded.
There are 2 major blogs and 2 mini-blogs. Each blog contains sophisticated taxonomies–a writing endeavor in itself.
Each category and sub-category had to be populated with previous and new writing, with new writing generated on a continual basis.
Each venture and adventure became a part of a new company, Entertainment Cyberscope, Inc. Consequently, branding and the creation of logos, taglines, catch-phrases and titles are as equally important as articles, posts and eBooks.
Several large scale writings were originally intended for print but because of the evolving nature of the Internet and greater flexibility in web design, these works became “eBooks” and are still In-Progress.
I can now launch an eBook and make a considerable sum of money without having to sell millions of copies.
The money I invested was considerable with a very high expected ROI. The more I spend on development the greater my own feelings of self-worth.
Web design is constantly evolving, with new technologies and applications born every day.
A website is worth what you are willing to put into it.
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Q. If you have a complicated pricing system for your service, please give all the details here.
A. Writing a single article or series of articles is pretty straight forward, usually paid by an hourly rate or word count.
When it comes to populating a website with content or writing eBooks, pricing becomes more complicated.
If an eBook is more about structure and presentation, hourly rates and/or word counts apply.
However, if the eBook requires a grasp of the subject matter, problem solving, finding creative solutions, and/or is meant to persuade, this requires the ability to conceptualize. Such an eBook requires vision.
Experience, creativity and vision become criteria in the negotiation of fees.
Also, an eBook will most likely require research. I’m a big fan of citing sources and many clients don’t realize the time and skill involved in finding the right sources and then drilling down into those sources to find what helps give the eBook credibility.
With a website, it takes tremendous creative talent to come up with a single phrase or slogan, which can have far greater impact than a string of eBooks.
Slogans can brand a site, product or service. It takes wit and cleverness to come up with catch-phrases, and those words must fit the site, product or service like a tight glove.
Slogans, taglines, catch-phrases, logos and titles require creativity and time, with an emphasis on creativity.
Such writing can be accomplished in minutes or days. Some ideas are born spontaneously while others need to bake in the oven longer, so to speak.
Still, some ideas are like seeds and take considerably longer to grow, develop and reach fruition (screenplays, novels, textbooks, etc.).
With websites is also not just the words but understanding information architecture. Having designed my own website proves invaluable in knowing not just what words to use but where to use them and how to use them (keywords, SEO, eye-candy).
Websites contain real estate and real estate is precious. A box here or a block quote there takes up space with impact based on what page or post contains the writing and/or web object.
So, for both eBooks and websites, the work is not just stringing together words but also being able to conceptualize; being able to see the bigger picture.
It takes vision and creativity as well as skill.
I may charge a higher fee but the ROI is worth it not just in the here and now but into the future.
All of the above can be put in terms of hourly rates, word count, or fee per task and/or challenge.
What works best for the client is the most preferred method of payment.
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Q. If you were advising someone who wanted to get into your profession, what would you suggest?
A. It’s important to understand the difference between writing for yourself and writing for others.
By that I mean writing is sometimes creative and sometimes practical. You’re not writing the next great novel when writing articles designed to sell/promote products and services. That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative.
Everyone realizes the Internet is a creative medium and the more creative you are the better chance you have of gaining an audience.
Know your audience. Care about them. You’re not just writing words but entering peoples hearts and minds.
Writing is persuasion, so make sure you have something to say.
You have the power to change the world.
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Q. Write your own question and answer it.
A. Why write?
Writing is a form of expression, but more so, it’s meant to persuade. Even expression, such as opinions, are meant to change the opinions of others or reinforce ideologies and beliefs.
We communicate to survive. In that sense, words are as critical as the food we eat.
Words are also the blueprint for virtually every human endeavor. Movies are born from screenplays. Politicians are elected via speeches. Business is regulated by the written contract.
Ultimately, whether writing fiction or ad copy, the goal of expression and persuasion is to hopefully make the world a better place.
Words-oral or written–are a bridge to get from one place to another. Writing is a tool used to accomplish a goal, from persuading others to bridging gaps to selling products and services.
Writing increases our awareness and understanding of our selves and the Universe around us.
