Hi Everyone,
I can’t believe it’s already the middle of June. Promotion for Healing has slowed down, but definitely not stopped. I will be Ann Arbor, MI next week visiting my son, Conrad, and also doing an event at the Ann Arbor Library on Tuesday, June 23 at 6:30 pm. The Indie Bookstore Literati will have books for sale. If you’re in the area, please come and make sure to introduce yourself. More info here.
Today show blog
Being on the Today Show would probably be a lot of fun, but being interviewed to be on their blog is almost as good and requires no makeup or dressing up. I heard from several people who read the column and reached out to me to lament inhumane care they or a family member had received. That makes me so sad, and is also why I’m committed to keeping the conversation going about returning compassion to health care. Read the Today.com interview here.
Harvard Med event
This is my third newsletter notice about this event. Hey, this is what authors do to make our publicists happy (more on that below). This VIRTUAL event is tomorrow night, Thursday, June 23 at 6p ET. It will be a panel discussion on Healing and compassion in health care. I’m sure on a lovely June night there is nothing you would rather do than tune in to my talk. So do that, and then afterwards go out for a drink with a friend, take that romantic walk, or have a porch conversation as the sunset emblazons the sky. Sign up info here.
How is HEALING doing?
People ask me this a fair amount and I think what they want to know is how Healing is selling. The truth: I don’t know. This is book number 3 for me and I haven’t ever asked for sales numbers, even when The Shift made The NY Times Bestseller list. I don’t ask because unless I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books, I can’t imagine a situation where the numbers would make me feel good rather than bad. That is, I know myself well enough to know that sales numbers that don’t meet the bar of “amazing”—whatever that means—would make me feel I had failed. I’m sure if my books were selling like the proverbial hotcakes my publisher would tell me, but then again, maybe not, or only if I asked.
The point is, we live in a world right now where numbers evaluate so much of what we do. It used to be how much money does someone make, and now it’s how many likes do you have, how many followers, how many retweets, how many clicks, how many subscribers? The model is for each of us to “monetize” our lives, a word and idea I despise even as I accept the reality of market demands for writers.
The sweet spot, though, and what I aspire to, is to have a healthy respect for the exigencies of the market, while not forgetting why I wrote Healing in the first place. I wrote Healing to say in a very personal way that health care is failing patients all the time and could be better without too much effort; that is the lesson of the Radiation Oncology Department I describe in Healing. The same social media that I complained about in the previous paragraph has brought me comments from many readers who have been moved by Healing and found my story validating. One writes to make money, yes, but why I write is also, and maybe primarily, to make a difference. I can’t seem to wholly claim that value yet—it seems so retrograde and naive, but it may be the truth.
So, I do what my publisher and publicist ask me to do to get the word out about my book, not only because I want people to buy it, but because I want people to read it and be moved by it. I want people to say that unkindness in health care is a damn shame that we need to address. Of course, a lot of things are happening in the world right now that are a damn shame and worse: the war in Ukraine, kids being massacred in schools while Republican politicians refuse to legislate gun safety for assault weapons, hearings about January 6 and the thwarted attempt to overthrow the last Presidential election. Never mind climate change and the incredibly restrictive anti-abortion laws being passed in some states.
It’s a lot to bear, I know. And I’m probably not selling as many books as I would like, but I am helping people feel what for them is a deep and enduring pain from compassionless health care. That won’t make me rich, but it does, oddly enough, make me feel hopeful. Can’t buy me love or inspiration. I want Healing to give both to readers.
Policy posts
Last week’s newsletter on why I’m not renewing my membership in the American Nurses Association got a lot of views and great comments. Next week I’ll share my thoughts on returning—or not—to clinical work.
In the meantime, I’m off to Scotland on July 2, to spend a week with my daughter Sophia in Edinburgh. She is there now doing a geology camp and will have earned a week of play. I’m glad that spending an extra week in the U.K. with her mom seemed fun.
Hugs to all and keep enjoying the summer,
Theresa
That Today Show interview was great! I loved the part where you said that we think that we have to be submissive and well-behaved in order to be treated well, but that it’s ok to push back. I’m reminded of Elaine in Seinfeld getting a black mark in her medical record as a “difficult patient” and getting sidelong glances from every medical professional she encountered. It kind of feels like that sometimes!
I think you are smart not to look at sales figures and to prefer a qualitative assessment of how your book is doing, in terms of lives touched. We need to make similar choices in other areas too, like education.
Have a great time in Scotland!