Happy Valentine’s Day, if you’re into that sort of thing. Me? I’d rather not waste money on cheesy Hallmark cards, chalky candy, and stuffed animals that are just going to end up in the donation pile.

Today, we started out strong by watching a few parody commericals about Pimp My Ride, a tv show that used to be on MTV that took old, beat up cars (hoopties) and “pimped” them out to be awesome.

That’s what we are going to be doing with our memoirs over the next few weeks. When we are done, you can honestly tell people that you are a published author. BOOM! add that to your Beo-Boast!

First, I read out loud an essay that a person wrote about her sister coming out as a lesbian. I read it once, and then I read it again. That was for a reason. The first time, I just wanted you to listen to the story and be respectful as an audience. The second read, I wanted you to write down at least one thing that you liked about the essay.

Then, I sent you outside in the hallway to do the same thing in a small group setting. Each person was supposed to read his or her essay aloud TWICE and the listeners were supposed to wrote down one thing they liked on the Post-It. I had you do this for a multitude of reasons, but the BIG reason is that you find a lot more errors when you read your own essay aloud.

Some people decided that they wanted to rewrite their essays because they didn’t have enough written down to share. In order to REVISE or PIMP out a hooptie, you have to have something to work with, and if you only have a few sentences written, that’s not a hooptie, that’s just merely a wheel.

When we can back in the room, I had a sentence on the white board. I went to the ER. We then added details:

Look at how many details we added just to that ONE sentence! If you have a hooptie already written, it’s going to be easy to revise it for details, but if you only have a “wheel”, you are going to be doing a lot more work.

We then color coded the Sister essay:

We highlighted the first essay together, and then you highlighted the next paragraph on your own.

On Monday, you are going to highlight your ENTIRE essay, specifically looking to see if your essay has all four colors throughout. A good essay needs to have these details interspersed throughout. If you are missing a color or you entire essay is all yellow, this gives you a good idea how to revise it. Turn your highlighted essay into the corresponding drop box under Memoir.

You will revise your essay on Monday and turn it into the corresponding drop box under Memoir.