Cher found writing her memoir extremely tiring: 'I don't want to keep doing this'

While writing her two-part memoir, Cher threw out her first draft, which she felt wasn't revealing enough.

Turning back time is more exhausting than it sounds.

Cher, who released part 1 of her self-titled memoir on Nov. 19, did not find the lengthy walks down memory lane it required to craft her book to be particularly enjoyable.

"Sometimes at the day's end, I would really be tired," she reveals to Entertainment Weekly. "We did this for months — going back and forward. But sometimes I would just say, 'You guys, I just can't do this anymore. I will be so glad when this is over.' Because sometimes when we were in the bad part, the bad part weighed so heavily. Now it's over, and it's not a part of me."

Related: Cher says her 2 divorces were easier than getting into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in rousing induction speech

Cher does get brutally honest in the memoir, revealing the dark side of her marriage to Sonny Bono, her difficult childhood, the history of addiction in her family, and more. But was it cathartic to release these stories into the world?

"I don't know if it was healing," she muses. "While I was talking about it, it was just exasperating and tiring. I just kept thinking, 'I don't want to keep doing this.' Then, there'd be something really funny, and I would go, 'Okay, I can do this.' But it's not an easy thing."

It's so difficult, in fact, that initially Cher didn't know how much she was willing to share, and she even wrote a version that she tossed out that was far more guarded. "It's hard telling everything about your life," she says. "Some things really don't belong. I wasn't as forthcoming in the first version. Then I thought I don't want to do this like this, because if you're going to tell your life, you've got to tell your life. So, I went back and made the decision to say much more than I actually wanted to. There are only a few things that are just so private, I can't."

Related: Christina Ricci says Cher protected her on Mermaids set: 'She never wanted me to feel insecure'

"These are stories that happened, and even though some of them are rough, how do you tell your story without telling your story?" she adds. "I was afraid to do it in the beginning. But once I made the decision to do it, I just made the decision."

There wasn't a lot of research required in uncovering her family history at least. Cher says that her mother was quite vocal about her past and that many of the stories in the book were ones she heard throughout her childhood. "I heard about my mom's terrible childhood almost every day of my life," she quips. "If something happened [to me], my mom would say, 'Oh, but that doesn't even compare to what happened to mine.' And one day I went, 'Mom, you know what? It's not fair that you don't give me my own pain. Just stop it.'"

Related: Cher drops petition to be appointed conservator of adult son Elijah Blue Allman

Here, Cher gets the chance to be honest about her own pain, and she hopes that if nothing else, choosing to be honest about her past will help inspire other young women coming up in the world. "I hope that I made it a little easier for the girls coming out," she reflects. "I have been brought up by women who were kick-ass women, and they worked, and they sometimes lived together, and they were beautiful."

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

She never had a grand plan to write a memoir some day. "It just was the time," she notes. "My mom always said, 'What belongs to you comes to you.'"

Related: Julianne Hough says Cher made her cry (happy tears) in a bathroom stall while filming Burlesque

However, it was her decision to split it into two parts. She jokes it was because her life was so eventful that "Who could have held it in their hands to read it?" But for her, it was really more because she feels that her life is made up of two distinct halves: her childhood and early career with Sonny Bono and then her life as a film actress. Part 1 of the memoir ends in 1982 just before Cher goes to New York to begin pursuing a career as a serious actress.

"That was the beginning of something completely new," she says of where part 2 will begin. "It was the beginning of a new life for me."

Related: Cher says she doesn’t date men her age because 'they’re all dead'

That doesn't mean that part 2 won't also have its share of highs and lows. "You can't be an artist and not go through hard times," Cher concludes. "People don't always love you. People sometimes hate you and you haven't done much; you just made some wrong decisions maybe, but you're still you. Then you wait, and then you do something that becomes popular. Sometimes it was fabulous and sometimes it was heartbreaking."

Cher: The Memoir, Part One in all its fabulous and heartbreaking honesty is available now.