Ask the Author: Harry Nelson
Answered Questions (6)
Harry Nelson
Writing helps me clarify my thinking and identify the weak points in my ideas. I am grateful for the process. It is also a powerful thing when someone says, "I read such-and-such piece that your wrote. It really helped me." The idea that your words can have force in the world without your physical presence is a testament to the power of the medium.
Harry Nelson
My process is iterative. When I got stuck at one point, I just moved to another. I usually had no trouble finding areas where I had things I needed to get out, but when I did get stuck, I turned back to my research and distilling key points out of the texts that were most important.
Harry Nelson
So many people are walking around with important ideas to share, but having trouble getting them onto paper or doing so but feeling they are too rough to share. The key is to force yourself to write consistently and then to find supportive readers to comment and refine your thinking. The process of sharing you work is invaluable in itself. Many people have expressed amazement that I was able to find time to write while running my businesses, with 50+ employees in our law firm and another 20+ in several spin-offs. It is just a matter of committing the time. I wrote late at night and early in the morning. I took time wherever I could find a quiet 30 minutes. I urge anyone thinking about doing it to just make the time. The process gave me a level of clarity about my passions and my work in this world.
Harry Nelson
Right now, I'm in the thick of working on projects to build out the "prescription for liberating a nation in pain" in terms of articulating the key ideas in the book further and convening conversations to move them forward. I'm in dialogue with clinicians, religious communities, workplace wellness experts, and am having trouble making time to work on anything else. I am getting interest in way too many follow-up projects to pursue, especially since I'm not ready to even think about the next book.
Harry Nelson
Working on a long list of healthcare regulatory problems as a lawyer, I keep a mental list of all of the subjects where there is a disconnect between the public discourse and the reality we experience on the ground. It helps to be a little obsessive. After getting clarity about the problem, I tend to start bouncing ideas off of the people I come into contact with -- healthcare providers, regulators, academics, people doing patient advocacy and working for payors, and other outside voices. When I finally feel like I have some clarity, I blog or put together a presentation to test out my ideas. I tend to be very goal-focused, so one of two things tends to happen: either people tell me, "Nice try, Harry, but you need to go back to the drawing board," or I see that what I presented resonated. When I see that people connected with the ideas, it fuels my passion to keep going further. I am very relationship-driven, so reactions to the work drive my inspiration.
Harry Nelson
After self-publishing From ObamaCare to TrumpCare: Why You Should Care in 2017, I got interest from several publishers about a sequel on the future of American healthcare. As I sat down in early 2018 to write that book, I realized that I could not think about anything other than the trainwreck of our national response to the opioid crisis. I'd been advising doctors on opioid prescribing for 17 years, and working with one addiction treatment program after another on suicide and overdose prevention, and I felt an urgency about getting a message out there about the work ahead. In March 2018, I gave a talk at the California Society of Healthcare Attorneys about how we needed to move from a reactive towards a proactive approach, with data showing the crisis worsening. Several attendees told me it was the most passionate and visionary message they had ever heard from a health lawyer, and they put me in touch with leading health policymakers in the federal government and several states. The more conversations I had at the highest levels, the more convinced I became that I needed to write a wake up call that started a different conversation.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more