Homework

If you’re participating remotely, email your work to me as a Word attachment or with a Google Docs link by Wednesday at the latest: gclevine@ayortha.com. I’d like three to five double-spaced pages if the work is typed. If you’re hand writing your work and bringing it with you, skip lines on your pad. If your pad isn’t lined, estimate the spaces. Three to five pages too. Please write clearly and big enough for old eyes to see with reading glasses. Please don’t write with pink or yellow ink, or with a pencil unless you press hard. If you have questions, you can email me at gclevine@ayortha.com, or phone me at 845-490-9368.

• This adventure comes from The Odyssey in Greek mythology: The hero Odysseus lands on an island during his journey home from the Trojan War and, together with some of his men, enters a cave stocked with food and enormous farm tools. When its inhabitant, the one-eyed giant Cyclops returns home with his flocks, he blocks the entrance with a great stone and eats two of the men. Next morning, Cyclops kills and eats two more and leaves to herd his sheep to pasture, rolling the stone back in place behind him.

After the giant returns in the evening and eats two more men, Odysseus offers Cyclops wine given to him earlier on his journey. Soon, Cyclops falls into a deep sleep. Odysseus heats a wooden stake in the cave’s fire and drives it into Cyclops’ eye.

In the morning, blind Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, feeling their backs to make sure that the men are not escaping by riding them. However, Odysseus and his men have tied themselves to the undersides of the animals. As Odysseus’s ship sails away, Cyclops throws huge rocks at it, which it barely escapes.

If you tend to get stuck in detail, make sure you include at least two steps in the story, like exploring the cave and Cyclops’ entry.

If you tend not to put in enough detail or if you want your stories to be longer, take your time describing the cave and Cyclops when he shows up.

• Mark and Marka are best friends, but trouble has been simmering between them, which both have been afraid to mention. They’re on a hike together when one says to the other, “I hate when you do that.” Write what they say and what happens.

• Mark and Marka are twins. At dinner one of them says to either their mother or their father, “I hate when you do that.” Write the conversation or argument that follows and what happens.

• This familiar lullaby is totally crazy and creepy, in my opinion:

Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Who put Baby up there? Does somebody want to kill an infant? Turn this into a story.

• Sam is having dinner at a Mexican restaurant with their parents. He (or she) bites into a burrito, which turns into a chunk of dry, hard bread, and he finds himself sitting on the ground near a fire in front of a tent on a vast plain. Tall grasses toss in the wind. His parents are gone and he doesn’t know how to get back to them. A stranger comes out of the tent. Write what happens.