Welcome! My goal for every interview I have the privilege of doing is that it feels like a conversation between friends. Good conversation feeds the soul, and it’s one of my absolute favorite things about this job. My hope is that this will be the first of many Q&A-style features with some of the lovely and fascinating people I’ve been lucky to get to know, both in business and everyday life. I hope you enjoy the conversation!

It was late fall of 2019 that I got a text from Becky Blue asking to meet at my favorite local coffee shop, Queen City Bakery. She had heard through the grapevine that I was in the writing and editorial space, and she had an exciting project in the works.

I didn’t know Becky well at the time, but I went to college with one of her sons, and she herself is an Augustana grad who remains heavily involved in the alumni community. Her involvement reaches far beyond our alma mater, too. Chances are good that if you’re local to Sioux Falls, you may have met Becky here or there. She has a knack for getting connected. 

Becky was looking for an editor and accountability partner to help with her second book, Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days, of which she was still early in the writing stages. I had never worked on a book before, but the prospect definitely appealed to me, and Becky was willing to give me a chance. I was thrilled for the professional opportunity, and now, almost three years later, I’m grateful for so much more than the editing experience. 

Working through the book has been a learning experience for both of us. I got to watch as the story unfolded — she was only a few chapters in when I got on board — and I provided comments, critique and a lot of (possibly unwanted) commas along the way. Beyond the editorial process, I gleaned so much firsthand wisdom from Becky about the subject matter at the heart of Turning — embracing a fresh and positive outlook on aging. 

Turning offers a keen perspective on aging — something we have learned to fear early on, not just at 60 or 70. At 26, I’ve stumbled more than a few times upon social media chatter from women my age or younger bemoaning fine lines and other early signs of life’s inevitable trajectory, and promoting solutions that run the gamut of expense and extremity. The physical pressure alone can be disheartening, but of course, aging is about much more than wrinkles or gray hairs — it affects our bodies, minds and souls. While Turning will particularly delight older generations with its anecdotes of decades past, it is a deeply valuable read for all of us who are living, and thus, aging.

I’m grateful to call Becky a client, but more importantly, a mentor and friend. We sat down together to reflect on the writing process and how she hopes her book will impact people. 

Enjoy a peek into our latest conversation (once again at Queen City Bakery ☕ 🍰).

Q&A edited for length & clarity.

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In a recent TV interview, you talked about always knowing you’d write a book someday. Where did that come from?

I started writing poetry in junior high, and I loved that. My mom was an English teacher, so I was always surrounded by words and books. When she got cancer during my high school years, I sort of became a caregiver to her, and that’s when my interest in nursing really started. Before that, I probably would have said I was going to be an English or journalism teacher. The English teacher who replaced my mother was such a gift to me. She really encouraged my writing, and so I continued to write through high school, even though I knew I would go into nursing.

What inspired you to get started on what would become Turning?

I think it was watching a few other friends turn 60 and listening to the chatter — this sort of collective ‘Oh no!’ — and I thought, ‘No, I know how aging works, and I know we can view this in a positive way.’ As I was approaching my own 60th birthday, I thought, ‘I need to write about this in real time.’ It’s not that I knew exactly what I was going to write, but I planned to be observant about what I was going through.

Did anything surprise you about the writing process? 

I tend to be very free flowing, and I’m not a great planner in a lot of parts of my life, so I figured I should outline the book. I thought I knew what my chapters were going to be, but every few weeks I’d start on a new chapter, and that would send me on another tangent. So, obviously it doesn’t look like my original outline, but I love how it ended up. It was very much a process rather than a roadmap, and I also brought my faith into that — I prayed about it, and I just tried to write what I felt the world needed to hear.

We connected pretty early on in the process. What drove you to reach out to someone for help? What were you looking for?

Something about being my age is that you know what your gifts are, and you know what your gifts are not. Anytime I’ve been successful in my career it’s because I’ve had this dyad, this other person who had a different set of gifts and could help me succeed.

I knew I needed somebody who could keep me on task and give me honest feedback, and I was certainly looking for somebody with the editorial skills that you have. I always say that I loved writing before I became a nurse, but being a nurse kind of made me a bad writer because you’re just writing quickly.

It was such a gift to have you with me because writing can be a very solitary activity, and I’m not that kind of person. I much prefer to have someone to bounce ideas off and get feedback. From the get-go, I had a great trust in your skillset, and in a lot of ways, I saw you as a younger me based on your personality, so I was able to have confidence in whatever you would recommend.

Did the pandemic alter your writing process in any way?

One of the things that happened was that I told myself at the beginning that I was going to use this library of books that I’ve collected over my lifetime — books that I maybe haven’t spent enough time with. I wasn’t going out to the library or the bookstore, so I just picked all the books off my shelf that I thought related to the topics I was writing about, and I basically reread them all and found that they read differently now being 60, and they also seemed to fit together kind of like a puzzle. That was really wonderful, because like anyone else, we were mostly staying at home, and it was a gift to be writing during the pandemic. It really gave me a purpose.

What books from your personal library really stood out to you? 

One that I’ve always loved is Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She has such a wonderful long view of life and what matters, and there’s such a depth to her writing. I really value clarity and brevity, and that’s her style. 

I think if we need anything in this world today, it’s for people to ask more questions and to not always think that they’re the experts. The result of asking more questions is that we are then going to listen. I’m obsessed with people who are good at listening.

Becky Blue

Another I keep revisiting is called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger which, again, is a nonfiction book. I think if we need anything in this world today, it’s for people to ask more questions and to not always think that they’re the experts. The result of asking more questions is that we are then going to listen. I’m obsessed with people who are good at listening.

Your husband, Dan, retired in the midst of you writing this book. What was it like to watch him go through a stage of life that you were actively writing about? 

It was kind of like an experiment. I had already written the retirement chapter with all of these recommendations and things to watch out for, and all of a sudden we were living it. So, I’m glad I had some experience through what other people had told me and other books and blogs I’d read. It’s really a transition, and I’ve read that you should give yourself at least a year, as a couple, to really adapt to it. 

Who is the audience for Turning? Did that change as you were writing?

My first project was a cookbook of family stories and recipes, and it was self-published and distributed locally, but once I linked up with this publisher in Virginia, it made me think more about how Turning could reach a broader audience — both geographically and in age.

The target audience wouldn’t just have to be people turning 60. At one point I thought it would just be for people who were coming up on that birthday, but I realized I could think bigger, and it could be of interest across the country, across broader ages, and hopefully not just to women. 

We’re all aging, no matter what. I write a lot from my nursing perspective about the body, mind and spirit, which is something we all need to be aware of and need to be teaching our children. I think we all lead with our physical appearance, and we are so much more than that. How do we care for those three parts of our being equally? 

Being involved in this process firsthand with you has been so encouraging and inspiring to me as a writer. What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?

Probably one of the most gratifying things that could come out of this book would be for someone else to decide to write a book. I believe most everyone has a book inside them. So, as far as advice, I think it would be to take it in baby steps. For me, it was that I started my blog, and after that, I wrote the cookbook with these family stories which felt very comfortable. Then I moved into something broader, a topic that I was passionate about. For me, that was non-fiction, but I think it’s important to write what you know. Maybe you’ve got a children’s book inside of you or a selection of poems. In this day and age, there are so many ways to publish and get your writing out there.

If somebody does want to write, having an accountability partner is fantastic. Maybe you can find a little writing group to write with and then read to each other. Having someone read your book is an incredibly vulnerable act, but once you do it and you get feedback, whether positive or negative, it’s such a gift and only makes your writing better.

Also, find a setup that works for you. My ideal writing scenario is when I’m in my house by myself. I think I was most productive at a time last fall, sitting at my dining table, looking outdoors and watching summer turn into fall. 

How do you think we approach aging as a society? Have you seen that change in your lifetime?

When I started geriatric nursing practice and I was about 30, I would say that we were making changes in the culture, little by little, but it takes a long time. There are certainly positive role models of aging out there, but still, there are people turning 30 and panicking, or people turning 50 and thinking their life is over. Realistically now, most of us are going to live to be 90, but that mindset won’t change unless we keep telling these positive stories of aging.

One thing I learned from watching older people who were reaching the end of their lives, is that the spirit kind of takes over. Especially with people of faith, you’ll find that they’re ready to go. Usually that’s not the case for their loved ones because it’s hard to let go, and I think the pandemic also revealed to us that we don’t do death very well in the United States. It’s not one of those things we want to talk about, but it’s a cultural thing we should be preparing people for. From what I’ve experienced in my own life with my parents passing away, it can be, dare I say it, a beautiful experience, especially for people of faith.

How did your faith play into the book? 

It goes back to my experience with nursing, and how I view people as body, mind and spirit. I couldn’t write a book about aging without addressing that, and so I tee it up right away in the introduction that I’m a person of faith, and I ask them to stick with me. I don’t think people should be afraid of that, no matter what their own definition of spirit is. I think we can always learn from each other, and it would be really interesting for me to hear from people who don’t have the same faith system as I do, to hear what they agreed with or where we differ.

What are your hopes for the book’s impact?

My hope is that people have an experience with the book. The way we’ve set it up is that there are 20 chapters, and at the end of each chapter there are questions. Some of them are about the experience of body, mind and spirit, some are about aging, and some are faith-based questions. I think it would be a rich experience for a book club or a Bible study, but ultimately I want people to be talking about what this “third act” of life can be. That was initially going to be part of the title which I struggled with a bit. Is it “the third act of life,” or do we use the word “aging”? But when we settled on the “more days” phrase, I loved that because everyone wants to have more days. It’s all about how you’re going to spend them.

Tell us a little more about the title, Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days.

If you look at people who are turned inward, there’s really something missing, there’s an emptiness there. For me, the way I view my Christian faith is that when I have my identity in Christ and not in physical appearance or intelligence, my identity is as a child of God and I’m forgiven for only trusting in myself. Then, I’m free to deal with whatever comes to me. I think our concept of aging today is so much about planning or place — living in a certain place and having a purpose — but with this book and the “Turning” concept, I look at aging as more of a posture of turning out to the world, being willing to pivot whenever you need to and see where it takes you.

How did the cover come about? What was your inspiration?

I knew I wanted to play around with this idea that we were children of the sixties. Many of my chapters open with memoirs related to growing up in that time period, and I do love the midcentury modern style, the music and the fashion of the sixties and seventies. So, when the publisher asked for inspiration for covers, I went to Pinterest and searched for designs from that time period, and it really resonated with me. The fonts are very characteristic, and you have these bright colors and interesting color combinations, so that’s where it started and, ultimately, where it landed. 

How did you get comfortable working with a publisher, taking criticism and deciding when to make changes and when not to?

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that I barely pursued the traditional publishing route. I wanted to write the book I wanted to write, I didn’t want a publisher that was going to challenge me at every turn. With the hybrid model I went with, they did push back on some things, but I think what helped was that I respect them and have a trusted relationship with them, as I do with you. Writing a book is like raising a child, and now they’re graduating from high school and going out in the world. You did your best and put the book out there. Who knows where it’s going to go? I’ve kind of done what I can with this one.  

What has been the most rewarding part of this entire experience?

For me, it’s to know that those thoughts of mine are down, they’re permanent, they’re written. The biggest thing I am in life is a mom, so to know that my children or my grandchildren can always go back to these words and be encouraged by them — even if it was never published — it would still have been a great accomplishment.

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Becky Blue is an author, wife, mother and retired geriatric nursing professional. She has previously published a cookbook, Made with Words: Stories and Recipes from a Kitchen Wall (2018), and her forthcoming nonfiction book, Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days, will be available for pre-order soon. 

You can visit Becky’s personal blog, Made with Words, to read more of her writing, and you can email her at beckyblue@mac.com if you’d like to be the first to hear when pre-orders become available. 

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Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the conversation, feel free to share it with your friends or leave a friendly comment. 💛