How much does music influence our writing? The GNG explores music writing.

After listening to some of Margaret Atwood's advice on Masterclass.com the GNG's challenge was to rewrite a scene in a fairy tale while music was playing. Each member of the group selected 2 classic storybook titles from a bowl. They were allowed to open the paper to reveal their selection when the music started to play. Each member had 30 mins to write a couple paragraphs of the scene.

DSharp - All The Stars (Cover) Kendrick Lamar & SZA

MiaMain: Peter Pan

"I'm entering into my fourth childhood."

These words hang suspended in air. As out of place in our reality as the belief of the eternal child who uttered them into existence.

This happy thought takes flight in him. Transporting him to a realm of mystical, magical immaturity, where times stands still for one and chases the rest of mercilessly

YvonneWalker: Hansel & Gretel

“I have not eaten in so long. This witch doctor has me on this no sugar diet. I mean, really. No sugar. My house is nothing but sugar,” the witch says out loud. “I don’t even know what this Keto diet is,” she comments looking at the floating tablet. “Mostly meat. That would be wonderful if these huntsmen weren’t clearing out my forest,” she sat with a heavy sigh with only a grumble in reply. “Quiet you,” she scolded her empty belly.

“Hahaha, look at this, Gretel. It’s a giant ass lollipop. I’m going to take a bite,” a voice called from outside the window.

“Hansel, you’d better not do that. We just ate and this looks like someone’s house,” a higher pitched voice replied.

“Yeah, whatever, here is your favorite, a chocolate bar or a shutter. Who cares, it’s delicious,” Hansel called out around a mouth full of sweets.

“What the F--,” the witch said as the ripping sound of her shutter brought her to the window. She took in the scene of two fat blonde children sharing the chocolate shutter; one on each side nibbling away. “You little sh--,” she was about to yell but thought better of it. Instead she grabbed two handfuls of candies and went to the door.

“Oh children, you shouldn’t be eating that dirty old shut—chocolate bar. I have much more inside. Come in, come in”, she beckoned the wide-eyed youngster. 

DAPTales: Rumplestiltskin

It was the third time and her third promise -- the third time doing the impossible. The miller’s daughter glared down at the loom and sighed. Her grasp tightened on her grip of straw as she mentally scolded herself to continue. Impatience with herself grew as she quickly sat and began to loom.  Soon her heart began to beat in time with the momentum of the foot pedals and it felt as though her life-force was pumping into the spindle with each strand of hay.

Just like before, the daydreams began. They swirled in her mind like a smooth elixir of excitement and joy. As she peddled faster her heart continued to match the rhythm and she could feel her daydream solidify into a reality so believable that she could feel the lips of her beautiful prince once more. His lips were as soft as feathers but still, she jumped out of her daydream like a startled rabbit. As the miller’s daughter touched her lips as if trying to prolong the feeling, she glanced down at the miracle at her feet; strands of gold.

Al-Falaq: Cinderella

A stroke of the brush, and another, then another, played out onto the canvas from the wisp of his admiring hand. A portrait emerges, layers of swirled hues clouded with the scent of turpentine, its colors light like a spring noon, pale like drifting clouds, imbued with a breath of happiness, contentment held within like an embraced child. Nothing within it could have implied the true image of its subject; a girl’s bent form, pain hidden in the arched curl of her back, hands worn from the unnumbered days of the same floor, scrubbed right down to the knot of the wood, a face holding only resignation to fate. A withering shadow among the clean but hollowed corners of her tiny world. Nary a hint existed of the bright, soft glowing tones of the painting which supposedly bore her likeness.

Staring into the canvas, glancing askance at her melting form beyond the window pane, inside which he was forbidden to tarry, the young artist’s heart swelled and turning with mixed emotion as he wondered: What might happen, if only you could see yourself as I see you, my dearest Cinderella? 

 Supaman - Miracle feat. Maimouna 

MiaMain: Pinocchio

"I'm just trying to keep it 100."

Standing there, her eyes beckoning me to ignore the obvious lie spreading between us, as she creates a fantastical world of fiction. The taller the tale the more elaborate the entertainment becomes. As she spins, I swear that I can see circus acts around me. At one point, I saw a formally attired insect, apparently awaiting rain, performing on the quickly unraveling thread of logic in this hastily woven falsehood.

I take a deep sigh, look her in the eye and reply, "It's your lie, tell it any way you want, Pinocchio."

YvonneWalker: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

“Would you look at this? Someone come look at this. Oh right, it’s just me here,” the wolf uttered. “Me and this kid; he must be from a broken home or something. I mean this is the third time he has said that I was going to eat him and they just keep running over.”

“Boy, where is the wolf? Where did you see him? We will kill this wolf,” a townsman told the little boy.

“I must have been mistaken, I thought I saw him,” the boy replied.

“Ha, no you didn’t. I am the night. No, wait. I come at night and this kid is messing up my dinner plans,” the wolf mutter laying back down on his hunches. 

DAPTales: Beauty and the Beast

“I say… Fuck the Beast!” Bellowed Gaston as he mounted his horse.

“Do yawl want this creature to run rampant in our villages and eating our bitches?! I say… Fuck the Beast!”

Gaston marched his horse forward and trampled the widow’s newly seeded flower bed. She yelped her outrage, but was quickly ignored and swallowed by the preceding crowd that followed Gaston, determined to do exactly as he suggested – to go fuck the beast.

Al-Falaq: CinderellaPrincess & the Pea

“Not a fan,” the girl said dismissively, sliding off the twelfth mattress upon which she had lain.  The salesman, developing an engrossing sense that the entire substance of his day would soon be consumed completely by this young customer’s brattish attitude, displayed none of his emotion, simply indicating the next offering with a genteel wave of his hand. His inner voice; having less obligation to demurity, grumbled frustratedly, Thisssss Biiiiiitchshshshshshs! 

“Why do they all feel, like, not good?” the girl demanded, with an authentic air of expectation of an answer. Carefully removing the mental projections of his hands from her tender, spoiled-rotten throat before addressing her, the salesman, patient as ever, simply smiled his close-lipped smile and replied, “Even a master craftsman, my dear, may struggle to make in life that piece which could meet the standards of a taste so impeccable.” Dumping her imaginary body in the ditches along the fringes of his mind, he waited for her to find her next failed repose.