Digging into Memoir: The Phases of Psycholiterary Mining

By Ellen Blum Barish

In the twenty years I’ve been coaching writers of memoir, I have seen two diametrically opposed truths about the process.

On the one hand, writing a story from one’s life differs wildly from one writer to another. I have never seen two people go about it in the same way.

Yet on the other hand, there are patterns. Recurring phases. Points in time in which the writer dwells before successfully moving into the next stage. Not every writer travels through these stage...