What is the title of your memoir? “The Woman with Three Elbows” while it is about my whole life, it concentrates on a decade on the 90s when I was misdiagnosed with mental illness, medicated almost to death and what happened to me after I got off all the drugs. It is a story about a woman waiting forever for someone to rescue her until she realizes she has to rescue her own self. That she was valuable and deserved rescue.
A pivotal review of the book by editor Candice Louisa Daquin who is a psychotherapist and poet contains an apology on behalf of mental health professionals which was unexpected and made me cry.
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What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I began this over twenty years ago. The original first draft’s title was “The Borning of Sarah.” It was prose.
I was totally inexperienced and found an editor all the way across the country. When after months she didn’t communicate, I ended up having to contact a local news anchor to find her.
When the manuscript was returned, large portions were missing. It languished half written for twenty years. A couple summers ago I picked it up and last summer 2021 finally completed a hugely different draft. That one was titled “The Night an Angel Landed on My Windowsill.” I consulted a trusted editor and several friends who work in memoir. Everyone felt it was a worthy project but the current prose draft was “confusing.”
Winter 2021-22 I began studying with poet Craig Czury. He pushed me to explore surrealism in my poetry. Suddenly one day a piece titled “The Composition of a Woman” spoke up in my head.
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Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. Since this project spans decades it was written standing by a bed with a legal pad on the top bunk to various computers, other pads, phones and tablets. I am also a visual artist and finally began this manuscript from the POV of a visual artist who is working in a figure drawing class in my current house. The final draft was done on my iPhone and iPad. It is a combination of these narrative figure drawing based pieces, prose and poetry from surreal to prose poems.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? My writing habits (again) covered decades with this. Mostly what I do is pull out my phone and tap away while something is streaming or the TV is in the background. Any time of day or night. Anywhere, that is the great thing about a smart phone.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers or Chapter number as references. This is in the second section titled “Song of the Motherbird” . When my mother died and a year later my youngest cousin, all my family disappeared. It was a pivotal and awful time that led me to concentrate on rescuing myself.
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Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? Writing about many of the memories, going back there is extremely emotional. I found the device of the figure drawings a way to create a buffer of distance so that I was able to write more objectively or observationally and to do so without making myself “bleed.” People ask all the time how do you decide what to include. Writing isn’t about wounding yourself, it is a healing path.
Copyright by Rachael Ikins.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? No. One version was burned up in a wood stove in my old house and that was the best for it. It wasn’t until I “heard” that lyrical, narrative voice in the POV of an artist last winter that the music really began.
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