Freelancer Pro Interview: Paul Spicer

Combining his knowledge of technology with his love of writing, Paul Spicer created a new travel writing application, iGo iWRITE. The 34-year-old Richmond, Virginia resident shares how he got into freelancing and what this new application means for travelers who have a story to share.

Tell us how you got started in the creative industry.

I grew up in Charlottesville, an artsy little college town in Virginia that is home to an absurdly large number of writers, artists, and musicians. Interestingly, C-ville also has a large number of citizens with disabilities. In the early 70s, as I was growing up, my mother was hired by the city as one the first people to organize therapeutic activities—from sports to art opportunities—for this growing population.

With a budding interest in writing, people with disabilities naturally made their way into my work, such as creative writing classes that I taught for people with various disabilities. To ease into the field, I followed the tried-and-true advice: Write about what you know. So while working a nine-to-five job in the healthcare/disability arena, I began pitching disability-related stories, with a community-based, opposed to medical, slant. In short, I wrote about my experiences growing up.

Because the rate of disability is growing, I found that the topic interested everyone from trade publications to consumer reads. At the same time, I began writing, and eventually published two disability-related books along with continuing education courses.

After about three years of disability-focused writing mixed with holding down a “regular job,” I decided to focus purely on freelancing. With clips now in hand in a specialized field, I began approaching consumer magazines, trade journals, dailies, and weeklies like mad in an effort to land gigs in any number of topic areas. To support this new freelance endeavor, I relied on a mixture of the royalties from books and disability articles along with picking up media and PR consulting gigs on the side. To encompass these varied – yet related – interests into one package, I formed an LLC, called Spicer & Associates, which would offer both professional writing and marketing services.

You run Spicer Associates and now a new business, Compleo. Which came first? Tell us about how you began with both outfits.

My freelance work, which like many writers can come in peaks and valleys, was initially propped up by the media consulting at Spicer & Associates. As my own boss, I’d scale my freelance writing up or down depending on the opportunities at the time. The marketing work, which can be more lucrative at some points, essentially fueled what I today joke is my writing habit.

In growing this mixture of writing and marketing projects I’ve become increasingly interested in new media, and how Web 2.0 now influences so much of what we do as writers and media professionals. This is essentially what led to co-founding Compleo, a Web 2.0 strategy consultancy that I also run with my partner, Sonali Shetty.

The marriage between my writing and marketing business with the technology business came in an unlikely place. I was actually undertaking my most recent book about traveling in the Caribbean, when I had an opportunity to really connect the dots. The book that I was writing, The British Virgin Islands: The Hometown Lowdown Guide to Travel & Taste, was the first in a series of hyper local books that feature the Caribbean by going island by island to promote the local chefs, small businesses, farmers, and hometown heroes that make each island unique. To make this work I chatted with every islander willing to share their story. I would have loved to visit each month, but based in Virginia, that simply wasn’t possible. I therefore used a mixture of in-person visits and new technology to seek out and communicate with islanders.

What I found along the way was a large outcropping of islanders, and travel fans, sharing their passion for travel online. When I couldn’t sit in a hammock and drink a Carib (a local BVI beer) with them, I could certainly start or engage new story subjects first online so that to begin sourcing new material. In these forums and chat rooms, which have now morphed into such popular sites as Facebook and LinkedIn, I discovered what I like to call modern day story tellers, those with a unique and unspoiled voice that can now be heard due to social media.

It was from this experience that the idea of using interactive media in the publishing world was hatched. My business partner and I created the secondary business, called Compleo, out of the idea that your everyday story teller needs to be heard, and that new technology can now serve as the vehicle.

Tell us about iGO iWRITE.

iGO iWRITE was the first web application created by Compleo. It was launched with the goal of publishing a series of hard copy travel books that are compiled and created entirely online by a community of travel aficionados. The unique platform for this project is Facebook. Whereas other web applications have attempted various forms of collaborative writing, none have packaged the writer experience in such a way, with constructive criticism, travel prizes, and a published series of travel books hitting Amazon and Barnes & Noble Online along the way.

Our ultimate goal is to find a way to blend new media, like Facebook, with more traditional forms of media, such as hard copy, that have been threatened somewhat due to the popularity of the internet. We feel that you can clearly have both, and that in fact – social media can actually play a healthy role in complementing and supporting print media, as evidenced by the iGO iWRITE experiment.

To provide incentives for the writers we have teamed with such supporters of social networking as the San Juan Marriott, who is offering a chance to win five years of free vacation at the resort if you get your story published after staying at the hotel via the resort’s “Vacation 2.0” package. Even if you don’t book the package, however, the San Juan Marriott and others will soon offer top prizes to the winning writers.

No matter if you’re a top writer or just enjoy the topic of travel—and writing—we feel the experiment provides an excellent chance to share favorite travel spots and work with other writers and travel fans using a new kind of vehicle. If you do happen to score a story, iGO iWRITE gives the writer the appropriate byline as well as photo, in addition to free copies of the book, prizes, and the possibility of further publicity in other media channels. Again though, the real attraction here is doing something new, and doing it collaboratively.

How did you combine your writing expertise into a technical application such as iGo iWRITE? Did you do more of the writing side or do you have technical skills? When did you learn them and do you continue with that education if so?

I do some of the technical work, but as a writer, my role is to bring the creative aspects of the project to Compleo, and the iGO iWRITE application. My partner, Sonali, is the true technical pioneer and does most the coding, along with a talented team of engineers. What we try to do in these cases is combine my experience with print and more traditional forms of media with her experience in emerging technology.

What is the hardest thing about balancing your life with three outfits?

The hardest thing is the need to sleep a few hours a night – it’s my enemy.

How can freelancers get the proper promotion for their inventions and projects?

As a writer it’s certainly difficult at times to promote your own story. Many times, writers do what they do because they love the thrill of learning about other people and telling their stories, not their own.

What you have to remember, however, when pitching your own inventions, stories, or projects is what interests you when you’re the one doing the interviewing, writing, or deciding on a story subject. Think about the angle that would interest you…find the hook, find the visuals, and find the headline.