To help authors market their books and and to help create greater awareness, we occasionally feature winning stories submitted to our 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Awards Contest on this blog. The journey to success is often a long one. We hope the stories of successful authors will provide some encouragement and help others overcome the challenges they face. This story was submitted by Ben Bryant.
One day in November 2011 while reminiscing about my childhood I found myself writing (what I thought was) an essay about being a little boy in the South. I became so engaged in memories that suddenly it was two weeks later and I had written about eighty pages.
I realized that I was beginning an autobiography.
There were no thoughts about publishing. I was just having a good time exercising my memory and wasn’t about to stop. It was too much fun.
Somewhere in the middle of the first book – of what became three – the realization hit me that I had lived a very singular, eclectic life. I wasn’t famous but that didn’t mean that what I had experienced wasn’t interesting. I got my first professional showbiz job while still in college and – before becoming a producer/director – performed off and on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, on network TV shows and commercials as well as on stages and in concert halls all over the USA and Canada. Oh yeah: I was even (briefly) an opera singer at the Met.
And I have known and worked with some extraordinary people, many famous, most not well known but very much worth writing about.
These volumes are ledgers of memory, almost entirely my own and some of the content is no doubt factually incorrect because memory is inconsistent, variable and highly subjective. Chronology is slippery. Events collide with one another and a whole year becomes muddled. But the process of recording all this is fascinating and salubrious for the mind and spirit.
So here I am four years later having finished writing the story of my life – up until now. I’m pleased.
In spite of never quite achieving “star” level in the wide variety of activities in which I have engaged, I have engaged. I didn’t stand on the side of the river thinking about the water. I jumped in.
I actually played college football for two NFL Hall-of-Fame coaches,
I actually dived from ten meter platforms,
I actually trod the boards on Broadway and appeared on TV screens nationwide,
I actually sang at the Metropolitan Opera,
I actually married a glamourous and brilliant woman – twice,
I actually served as producer to some of the world’s best film directors,
I actually directed and edited dozens of shows, concerts and documentaries,
I actually live in a Manhattan penthouse,
and
I actually wrote three books about all this and am damn proud of it.
Regarding my lifelong adherence to Yogi Berra’s “when you come to a fork in the road, take it” axiom: My wise counselor and winsome wife pointed out that what appeared at the time to be my merely taking the interesting fork in the road may have been guidance. The source of such guidance is infinitely debatable. Some would call it Divine or Angelic, others call it the Higher Self, Soul Wisdom or one’s Guides. Regardless of how it’s labeled, I do believe that there exists an eternally available cache of wisdom which sometimes leads us whether we’re aware of it or not.
Anyhow, by the time I’d finished the second book it occurred to me that the urge, the drive, nay the necessity to write this memoir was no accident. By that time in the process it was a culmination of three-score plus years of an artist’s unconventional odyssey and needed to be shared.
I’d never considered myself an “artist” until my sixty-ninth year. Someone else had to say it about me, to me, which they did. It was in reference to my video editing on Elizabeth Hepburn’s Better & Better Series. But with the 20/20 vision of retrospect I can see that even in my teens I had my own take on music. Listening to a recording of my performances as soloist with the Hollywood High Choir there was clearly an artistic quality in that boy’s singing. I don’t take credit for this; I believe it’s innate. You’re either born with it or you’re not. As I write this I’m listening to Dave Brubeck. Someone probably taught him where the notes are on the keyboard and how to finger them, but no one taught him to do what it was that made him a truly great artist. Technique can be taught, artistry cannot. I’m certainly not putting myself in Dave’s class but artistry in any degree is a gift. It is not learned.
Please understand that what I’m about to say is not bragging, it’s data. No one believes me when I reveal my “age”. Some of that is genetic. At ninety my mother could pass for seventy and when she fell off while standing on a chair at ninety-four she was “a little stiff and sore for a couple of days”. But the rest of my youthful mien is attitudinal. I staunchly refuse to “act my age” and I believe that this refusal has a lot to do with how I look and feel. I encourage you to do likewise.
Here is the most important of the many things I’ve learned. When you find the partner of your dreams remember that when little inconveniences arise they are a small price to pay for the joy of having a loving mate.
In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men there is a “Sheriff Bell” monologue, which seems resonant with my life: It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. … There was always some part of me that wanted to be in charge. Pretty much insisted on it. Wanted people to listen to what I had to say. But there was a part of me too that just wanted to pull everybody back in the boat. If I’ve tried to cultivate anything it’s been that.
I conclude with six gems from five wise men and a cookie:
“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” Sigmund Freud
“If you follow the herd you’ll end up stepping in shit.” Wayne Dyer
“Life may not be the party we hoped for but while we’re here we might as well dance.” Ric Masten
“It’s never crowded along the extra mile.” Fortune Cookie
“When things are going really well we should be sure to notice it.” Alex Vonnegut (Kurt’s Uncle)
“Never eat your soup with a fork.” Mel Brooks
And last, two more useful lessons I’ve learned the hard way:
Never put your glasses in a place where someone might sit.
And
Never freeze your mayonnaise.
For more information visit his website at http://www.entertainmentbooksbyben.com.