Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

by Meredith Maran

try to come to the edge of what I know and push a little further over that edge. I think that any topic or scene or action that elicits any of the “lesser” emotions—shame, guilt, humiliation, etc.—is likely where the good stuff is lurking.