Q&A With I Have Something to Tell You Author Natalie Appleton

On the eve of Christmas and a marriage proposal, Natalie Appleton discovers she doesn’t want to "settle for sevens," and starts over. So, she abandons everything in her hometown of Medine Hat, Alberta, for Bangkok—and so finds her destiny, as relayed in her new book, I Have Something to Tell You. Read our author Q&A below, and enter for a chance to win the book here! —Vita Daily

Hi Natalie! What, in a nutshell, is your new book about?

I think this is a book about feeling lost and starting over in your 20s. It’s about letting go of what’s not meant for you, and going after what is. It’s about synchronicities. It’s about finding your way and your voice, and true love. It’s also about a lot of everyday themes we all encounter, like family and how our parents’ lives and choices influence ours. And simple things like food and sex. Our relationship to the place we call "home". The alchemy of travelling alone. I would say it’s also about stories, the ones we make up and the ones that are true, that we have to tell ourselves, to move forward.

This book began as a column for the New York Times. How does a column evolve into a full-fledged memoir?

I actually wrote the manuscript first. When I was doing an MA in creative writing (narrative non-fiction), I had the chance to work with American memoir writer/editor Theo Pauline Nestor, and she had written one of the very first Modern Love columns and introduced me to it. At some point I thought I’d submit an essay version of my manuscript, and it was actually good fun condensing and compressing 90,000 words into 1,700 words. I didn’t think it would have a shot because "I’m Canadian" and the story grew out of a town I was sure no one had heard of, but the editor called me just a few days later, and within two weeks it was in the New York Times. I received so many inspiring emails from readers around the world who said my story spoke to them in some way, and wanted to know where they could find the book. Those responses propelled me in the succeeding years to bring the book into the world.

What was the most important "takeaway" from that part of your life?

The most important takeaway from that time, that I learned about myself, is that I think we have innate ways of knowing how to tell if something is good for us. I think because I was young at first I didn’t give my intuition, or whatever you might want to call it, enough credit. Now that I’m older, it’s easy to see how something inside knew which way to go. The great thing about being a woman in your 30s versus a woman in your 20s is that I listen for and to that voice, above the voices of others.

And what do you hope the biggest takeaway for readers is?

I think because this book covers so many different ways we can feel lost that each reader takes from it what they need, and their takeaways could be quite individual. But what I would have taken from this book when I felt lost, would have been to not feel so afraid to take leaps, big or small. I think a lot of people experience the unease of settling for something that’s not meant for them, whether it’s a job or a partner or a town, and fear taking that first step so much that they never get to what would make them truly happy. The last line of the book sort of sums it up: "Our tens, we ought to go after them."

Your journey is obviously not over. Will there one day be another memoir?

After several years of writing about myself, I’m kind of sick of me and I’m looking forward to getting back to writing about other people, fictional or otherwise. At the moment, I would say I would never write another memoir, but who knows?

natalieappleton.ca