For the past three weeks, I’ve been working with this super, young writer named Kristofer Upjohn, who has been patiently listening to me drone on about myself in both the written and aural form.
I was working with my friends, Ali Baxter and Joanna Burgraf at Insite Worldwide on Lady D’s new bio and we needed a writer. So I called my LA peeps, Jennifer Warner, editor over at Raves.com. She suggested I reach out to Kristofer to see if he was available. It turns out that he was eager to jump on the project. After a number of starts and stops–the most recent being a stop…lol. I kind of felt bad that I’d put my feelers out to Jennifer to get a writer and then put this kid through the ringer for a few weeks.
Then, I started thinking…shoot…what about my bio? The one on DJTonyZ.com I wrote a few years ago was A. too personal and couldn’t really be a bio since it was an autobio, having been written by moi; and B. really old and outdated (and kind of too pompous to tell you the truth).
I thought I needed to freshen up a bit and put something out there that really told the story in a bright, fast-paced, positive way. I’d gone through a lot over the past few years, and I guess one could kind of see that if they read what I’d originally wrote. It probably isn’t the best piece of prose that’s come out of me.
Anyone in PR will tell you, it’s never a good thing to write your own bio. You are too close to the story. You’ll add in too much flavor, too much of your own personality, and you’d write from a perspective that may not serve in your best interests.
I got an idea. Why not have Kristofer write my new bio? Sure! He’s available, eager, talented and really wants to break into the industry in a big way. Working with him will help him sharpen his skills and gain some knowledge about writing for an executive, instead of only DJs or producters, and get me the bio that I’d need to start taking my next steps in the dance music industry. So, I emailed him, we negotiated a fee, and the young buck started writing away.
First, it was a LONG list of questions he’d sent me. Yo…there were like…over fifty freakin questions! I looked at it like, okay, how am I gonna answer all these in one night? I tried to answer each one, typing in in the Word document he’d sent me, but my fingers were getting tired by question 5.
It was at that point, I decided to get smart and record the rest of the interview in Audacity, spit out an mp3 file, then let him download it off my Netmix server. Better me talking then writing everything down. Then again, some people would say that’s torture 🙂
It took about a week to get through that part of it, and Kris turned around a first draft the night he got the MP3. It was rough, but something we could start with.
After the second draft, we started getting close, but I really had to expand on some things so he could get a greater understanding of the specifics of many of the events that are covered in the piece.
The other night, Kristofer returned a masterpiece! There were one or two tiny glitches that we ID’ed and fixed. But at the end of the day, it’s a stellar piece of writing and I’m very proud of him for getting through it all and very grateful after he had to listen to me for hours and hours, droning on and on about all kind of bullshit about myself…ha ha.
So, without further adieu…you can now click on this link and it will take you to my new bio page!
Thank’s to Kristofer Upjohn, my story has now been told in full. A lot of the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll is missing…but hey, we’ll save those for the next 100 questions he’s going to have to ask me for the book! Right, Kris?
Tony Z.
