Author Betty Auchard Comes to Town for 'Tea' Saturday

Betty Auchard is a retired art teacher, mother of four, grandmother of eight, and great grandmother of six. She first began writing after her husband of 49 years died in 1998. 

Her first book, Dancing in My Nightgown, took six years to write and was published when Auchard was 75. It received an Independent Publisher Book Award in the memoir category and has been translated into Spanish, as well as turned into an audiobook.

The author returns to the on Saturday to discuss her second book The Home for the Friendless, published last fall.

Milpitas Patch: Your new memoir centers around your experience growing up with parents who were shackled to a tumultuous marriage. Was it difficult to revisit some of the uncomfortable moments of your past?

Betty Auchard: To be honest, it was usually no big deal, because I grew up with it. My brother, sister, and I didn’t know any other way, and we used to reminisce about the details of our poverty-stricken childhood during the Depression. Not in a bitter way, but in a way that often made us laugh.

When our parents weren’t arguing, they tried hard to be a normal family, but they were not “normal” enough to make it work. My mother drove many of the conflicts because she was a tad wacky, though talented in other ways – she was a gifted pianist and taught herself to play.

At 17, my parents were nuts about each other, but neither had the tools to stay together. They were young when they married and divorced from each other three times trying to make it work, and separated too many times to count. In spite of that, they stayed friends forever into their old age.

Patch: Many artists, writers, and filmmakers claim that their toughest periods in life greatly contributed to the evolution of their craft. What are the artistic advantages to growing up in a so-called "dysfunctional" family?

Auchard: Well, what I'm better at is seeing my odd childhood in a different light. I had always thought that my brother, sister and I grew up normal in spite of our parents. By the end of [book] revisions, I had gotten inside of their heads enough to see things from a different point of view. By the time I wrote the epilogue I was convinced that I had become a creative person because of our unusual upbringing. We kids HAD to cope, and we also found all kinds of creative ways to have fun because we were alone a lot. Those stories are all in the book.

Milpitas Patch: This is the second memoir you've published. How was it writing about your childhood, after already having opened up about widowhood? Do you feel your prose has evolved since your IPPY-award-winning first book?

Auchard: Yes, but only because I’ve been getting more writing mileage. I also have a good team giving me guidance: my publisher, Carolyn Uber at Stephens Press; my coach, Bruce McAllister; my editor, Sandi Corbitt-Sears; and my two daughters, Dodie and Renee, who are invaluable. I trust their judgment more than I can say. We writers must have a few people we trust to help us see things we miss. We’re often too close to be good judges of our own work.  

Patch: What advice can you offer those who feel inspired to write about their lives but don´t know where to begin?

Auchard: My approach is to jump in any old place. Keep lists of events in your life and notes about your experiences. Don’t try to write things in any order. Mix it up, like making a crazy quilt. Organize the stories later, but just get them down, and do not edit as you go along.

It takes many revisions to pull off a memoir that is fun to read and that engages the reader. A memoir must read like a novel where the characters have thoughts and feelings and conflicts to resolve and characters that you can see and feel. If you are the narrator of your memoir–which you are–you are the main character.
You must let us see through you and how you think and feel. There’s more to it than this, but these are some of the important elements of a memoir, even an unpublished one that is for the family. 

Patch: What advice can you offer children or anyone coming from a family that has difficulty staying together?

Auchard: Get involved in things you like to do, and hang in there. Make friends with nice kids and find ways to stay close to your siblings. Just because parents can’t stick together is no reason for the children to take sides. It’s not easy but children from broken homes also need other adults who validate them, such as teachers or relatives. We had aunts, uncles, and grandparents who stuck by us when our parents were split up, which was often. They practically raised us.

Patch: You live in Los Gatos and have been published in the San Jose Mercury News. How has the Bay Area shaped your craft as a writer -- where do you find inspiration at a local level?

Auchard: I've been an active member of the South Bay branch of California Writer's club for over 12 years. I got my start in writing at five different senior centers in three different Bay Area communities because their memoir classes are taught by competent people. I lived for open mic night because I love to read my stories aloud and because I have a love affair with audiences. Maybe that's one reason I liked being a teacher.

My husband and I grew up in the Midwest and moved to San Jose in 1956.  He was brand new on the faculty at San Jose State and two of our four children were born here.

I have at least one gig a month somewhere in the Bay Area and the feedback from people who have seen my programs has been invaluable to me. I have also visited school classrooms for junior high and high school English classes. I love talking to kids and adults about the importance of writing family stories. It connects us to each other. Writing validates that our stories are important. 

Patch: What are you anticipating about the upcoming event in Milpitas?

Auchard: I’ve been speaking to audiences for ten years. I presented my first book [Dancing in My Nightgown] to the Milpitas Alliance for the Arts several years ago. They were one of the best audiences I’d ever had. When the crowd is that responsive, we exchange energy, and my program becomes livelier. It was the only time my brother had seen my book talk, and he said afterwards, 'Sis, I didn’t know you were so funny.' I told him that my humor comes alive when the audience is that good.

Patch: What is the most important concept you'd like readers to take away from your memoir, The Home for the Friendless?

Slightly dysfunctional families don’t necessarily produce dysfunctional children. In our case, our parents made a sincere effort to provide a good life for all of us, but they lacked the skill to maintain a balance. It must be noted that during the Depression, many poor families were forced to place their children with relatives – as we were. These stories cover the first 17 years of my life which was all the time I lived with my family.

Patch: Is there anything else you'd like people to know?

Auchard: I would like readers to know how important it is to get their family stories on paper for their progeny to read. We are all living history. We don’t realize how important our stories are to others. We’re the only ones who can tell them. Our stories create a tie with the past and with the future. And family members reading them want more than statistics. They want to read what happened behind the scenes–how the kids felt about Grandpa going to jail for bootlegging during prohibition. I loved hearing my aunt talk about meeting my uncle in a “speakeasy” outside of town.

Patch: Did you ever imagine your writing would go far?

Auchard: I had no urge to be published. I wrote so I could stay afloat in the strange new world of a widow. I had never been single before. The stories in both books handle serious subjects with a lot of humor. They’re a mix of sad, funny, and poignant experiences. I had no idea that other widowed people would be helped by my first book.

Everything I wrote was from the heart. After that book I naturally got interested in writing about my growing-up years with my unconventional family, so I was writing two books at once. The Home for the Friendless was the logical next step in my story-telling but much harder to pull together because it all happened well over 70 years ago. I have my own coach and editor and attend workshops and conferences. I´ve learned a lot more about the craft of writing since 1998, when I started. The Home for the Friendless was published in November 2010 when I had just turned 80. I don’t yet know if it has won any awards, but we’ll find out soon!