Rover, Grandpa, young Hank Nuwer

Excerpt from "To the Young Writer"

One Writer’s Story: by Hank Nuwer

I grew up in Buffalo, New York. At fourteen, intending to become a priest, I enrolled at a Roman Catholic seminary, where young men train for the priesthood. At fifteen, however, I was expelled for fighting. At sixteen, the Buffalo (N.Y.) News published two articles of mine and I began writing for money.
In my twenties, I started—and ended a marriage—and lived through the deaths of several risk-taking friends. I used my lifelong readings in psychology and human behavior to explain away my sometimes violent actions.
Fortunately, I then found what poet Robinson Jeffers called “the honey of peace.” I found a mentor to guide my writing and formed several significant friendships. Coping with difficult situations become easier, and both personally and professionally, I made fewer mistakes. Eventually, I published nineteen books and more than 1,000 articles for various national magazines.
If you can take anything from my life, take this: If you find yourself at a low point, stay calm, work yourself painfully back to where you are right with the world, and don’t give up. If your peers, your teachers, or your family members doubt you, change their view by changing your life for the better. Refuse to take stupid risks, end associations with people who don’t give you what you need, and discipline yourself to think critically and to overcome self-pity and rationalizations.
Chances are that you can use the troubled times in your life as building blocks for your work as a writer. Remember, writing is not assembly-line work. Perseverance is a virtue writers must cultivate. Those who build a successful career in writing are those who keep writing, press on despite rejection, and make today’s work one notch better than yesterday’s. End of excerpt.

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Hank Nuwer at bat, Montreal Expos minor league traing camp, 1981
(Photo copyright Max Aguilera-Hellweg)