By Julia Gsell
“Before you get into someone’s head, you have to get into their hearts,” author Jeff Benedict said in a recent interview on the porch of his farmhouse in Buena Vista.
For the last five years, Benedict has been getting into the heart of former NFL star quarterback Steve Young. And now, with the recent release of Young’s co-authored book, “QB: My Life Behind the Spiral,” readers can get into Young’s head.
But Young barely knew Benedict when he asked him to co-author his memoir.
Benedict, who has been teaching writing at Southern Virginia University for several years, was getting ready to write a story for Sports Illustrated when the opportunity to work with Young fell into his lap. The story profiled four Mormon high school athletes who had chosen to continue in their sport after graduation, rather than complete their mission for the church. Mormons are encouraged to complete a two-year mission in their late teens or early twenties. But most complete them in the gap between high school and college.
Benedict, also a Mormon, picked two of the athletes to interview and gave his intern, J.J. Feinauer, the other two. Luckily, one of Benedict’s picks was Young.
“Boy was I glad I didn’t give him Steve,” Benedict told about 20 SVU students and faculty last week.
Shortly after their first interview, Young asked Benedict to write his story.
Young started his career as the eighth-string quarterback at Brigham Young University. He went on to play 15 seasons in the NFL. In 1985 he signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After two seasons, he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers and played for 13 years. Young was named the NFL’s most valuable player in 1992 and 1994 and most valuable player for Super Bowl XXIX. Since hanging up his helmet in 1999, Young received a law degree from BYU and been working in private equity. He lives in San Francisco with his family.
Benedict has written a number of books, including several best-sellers: “My Name Used to be Muhammad;” “Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage;” and “Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak that Changed the Way Americans Eat.”
Benedict moved to Buena Vista nine years ago with his family to teach writing at Southern Virginia University, but he has since moved back to his home state, Connecticut. He still maintains his Buena Vista home and returns every month to lead workshops there for SVU’s new Institute for Writing and Mass Media, which he directs.
Benedict describes memoir writing as a multi-phase process.
The first year is the “research phase.” Interviews with Young, and sometimes 15-hour periods dedicated to learning about him, consumed Benedict’s days. Benedict looked through Young’s journals, dug through boxes at a storage unit in Utah, and pored through Young’s medical records and high school newspaper clippings. But this phase wasn’t just about getting to know him.
“It’s about knowing everyone around him from the time he was a little boy to the end of his life story,” Benedict said.
After a biographer truly knows everything about his subject, then he can move onto the next phase, writing the first draft.
“Once you produce an initial draft, it’s like Swiss cheese—you can find the holes that need to be filled.”
But the first draft any good biographer shows his subject isn’t actually the first one, Benedict said. The first draft he ever showed Young was probably the 40th one he’d written, he said.
After doing the research, completing the interviews, and crafting chapters out of Young’s life, Benedict moved into the final phase: editing and re-writing. During these six months, Benedict made sure he captured Young’s nuance and voice.
Out of all the phases, getting Young to open up was the quickest part of the process, Benedict said, because, at first, Young didn’t intend for the book to be public.
“He never wanted to publish the book. He wanted to just basically have me write a publishable quality book that he would only show to his children and family members,” Benedict said.
Having suffered from repeated concussions, Young stopped playing football before his children were born. But even with that in mind, Young was incredibly forthcoming in his biography—more so than most athletes—Benedict said.
“When I look at athletes that have done biographies, I would dare anyone to find one that’s more open than Steve’s,” he said.
Benedict said the way a biographer gets his subject to open up has everything to do with trust.
“No one, unless they’re crazy, is going to let you into their head, until you’ve earned their trust,” he said.
Benedict gave this kind of advice to students Oct. 27 at the second monthly workshop for SVU’s Institute for Writing and Mass Media. SVU does not have a journalism or communications major, but Benedict helps his students make connections in the industry he cares so much about. Each month, he brings in professionals from the publishing and journalism world. For the October workshop, B.J. Schecter, executive editor at Sports Illustrated, spoke to the audience.
“This business is about relationships,” Schecter said. “You never know who can help you and when.”
Rick Wolff, senior executive editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, and Benedict’s former intern, J.J. Feinauer, also spoke.
Space is limited at these workshops, said Benedict’s student assistant, Scott Stoddard. SVU students have to be nominated by a professor or taking digital media and newspaper classes to get a seat in front of the professionals.
“B.J. and Rick have years and years of collective experience, and the chance for students to hear from them in such an intimate setting is a unique opportunity,” Stoddard said.
The Institute’s next workshop will be Nov. 17. John Kramer, vice president of communications at the Institute for Justice, and Carolyn Lumsden, editor of the Hartford Courant editorial page, will speak to the students.