I couldn’t have articulated this process at the time; I just sort of did it instinctually. But now when I talk about this with my students all the time, it’s one of the first things I address in memoir classes – that you have to put it all in because you’re writing your way into the ending of your own story. Even if you think you know what the story is, you don’t until you write it. If you start leaving things out you could leave out vital organs and not know it.
