Sallie Weissinger’s book, Yes, Again: (Mis)adventures of a Wishful Thinker, started as a journal that kept growing until it finally reached a true fairytale ending. Once the Gilda-winning author decided that what she had written in her private journal, which had a lot to do with her search to find the perfect soulmate, could be turned into a book, she enlisted two girlfriends as writing coach and editor. “I wasn’t sure how it was going to end, but then the end presented itself somewhat magically.”
Sallie was born in New Orleans but because of her father’s career as a military office, she grew up between the ages of two and sixteen in places like Germany, Ohio, Japan, Michigan, and New Mexico and attended eleven different schools. “I had the benefit of being raised with roots in the South, the Midwest, and overseas,” recalls Sallie, noting that she inherited both a love of travel and a love of family from her parents, and that her exposure to different cultures helped form who she became.
While Sallie says she had written newsletters for volunteer organizations and for her job, and at one point was a corporate communications director, she never set out to be a writer. “But here’s a personal confession: I always wanted to write one book, just to say I’d done it. Until Yes, Again, that could have been a book of poetry that she published in her 30s. But when asked if there was another book in her after Yes, Again, Sallie answered with a resounding “No!”
“I liked the writing part, but the business and sales part were overwhelming—getting copyright authorizations, getting blurbs, deciding on layouts and fonts and such, running with social media, tracking sales, keeping up a website, marketing and publicity. I didn’t cotton to that, as we say in the South. My grandmother always said, ‘I’ll have no more truck with that.’ That’s my current feeling. That could change, but I doubt it.”
For her writing, Sallie says she turned to Anne Lamott’s advice to accept shitty first drafts as a given, not to let them get you down, and not to be a perfectionist. “In fact, I like everything Lamott’s written in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I’d love to be her pal and go to breakfast or lunch with her on a regular basis. Or sit at the next table while she’s talking with her friends and listen to everything she has to say.”
Sallie’s memoir covers sixteen years of her life. One question that loomed large during those years, she says, is why she was spending so much energy seeking a soulmate, especially since she had a rich, meaningful life that was far better than most.
“I came to understand it was because I wasn’t willing to have the best years of my life be over at age fifty-seven. I knew I might not succeed, but I wasn’t going to stop trying. The search couldn’t be my whole life, but I was determined to make it be part of my life. To me, not trying was failing. It was okay not to succeed, but it was not okay not to try.”
And try she did. Now, she says it was an amazing experience to win the Gilda Award. “It’s rewarding, after three or four years of writing to have the work be recognized. I honestly don’t know exactly how long it took me, but toward the last year and a half, it was nose-to-the-grindstone intense. I keep pinching myself, asking if it really happened, or if it will turn out to be a mistake, like the Oscar announcement blunder for best picture of 2017, when Moonlight won and not La La Land, as initially announced. I’m so grateful!”
