POST GRADUATE COURSE ADDED: MASTER OF CREATIVE WRITING

Recently at the Moustache Press offices, in between a heavily bet/pet round of “bag the dentist”, we were marveling at our complete oeuvre – walls and walls of our books, essays, articles, and dissertations that are stacked and filed all around us wavering, wobbling and waiting to strike like an urban death snake. Such a staggering volume of work that will never be read. Hell, we didn’t even read it when we wrote it. This brief contemplation of our expertise led to a discussion about starting a community writing workshop with major university credit implications.

With no syllabus or modules planned, found, or stolen, we decided to teach creative writing the same way we approach creative writing: to not approach creative writing. One of the first rounds of students – we’ll call him “Crazy Eddie” – came up with the idea of generating original story ideas with the least amount of writing. I don’t know what the hell this is called, but it sounded good to me. Below are the best submissions we received from our first intake. We’ve also thrown in one of our own to confuse you. See if you can select the number of our submission. The answer will be provided at the end of this course. Yes, you are currently taking the course as you read this and I’m sorry to say, you’re not doing well.

SUBMISSIONS

1. This story starts in a shadowy empire on a world that has all but forgotten its musical past. In it, a wily talk show host runs into a paladin infected with an alien parasite. What starts as detachment quickly becomes true love (between the parasite and the musical past).
2. A hermaphrodite duct cleaner falls madly in love with an asexual miner – all thanks to a seminar. It seems a sourdough addicted to virtual reality will bring them even closer together.
3. In this story, a smooth nuclear engineer meets a district manager trapped by the past (literally). Curiosity quickly becomes a game of speed pogs.
4. A disloyal mentor is forced to live with a barber who possesses a strong immunity to Krautrock. What starts as hate soon turns into rape/hate – all thanks to someone doing laundry. What role will a zookeeper who was exiled to another dimension play in their relationship?
5. In this story, an intuitive bard hires an acrobatic police chief working in an orbital spaceport. A public boner breaks the camel’s back (cigarette) and then the gloves are off (body condom). Mola Ram is resurrected for anal heart massaging.

Now aren’t those something? Movie producers beware: we’ve date stamped and signed all these ideas with pen (erasable).

So I guess it’s time to assess your proficiency. It has been a long semester for you. What story did we put forward to raise the bar for our lowly students? If you guessed either 1 through 5, you were dead wrong. Haven’t you learned anything?