Threshold's Creative Writing Elective

The Threshold Program has offered the Creative Writing Elective to its students for almost two decades. Students meet to share their experiences as writers in an atmosphere that is safe, but one that challenges them to explore their ideas, imagination, and sense of humor! Every week students share their drafts and offer constructive feedback to one another. In doing so, they learn to listen and to support each other as they develop their voices as writers.

Assignments focus on memories, the possibilities of the future, and the here and now with emphasis on developing a student's ability to employ detail, to capture a moment, and to craft characters. While correct grammar and spelling are important aspects of creative writing, they are not emphasized in the process of drafting; creativity and brainstorming take the lead at the start.

At the end of each semester, students choose one or two pieces of writing to appear in the creative writing elective's anthology, New Beginnings. With the assistance of their peers and the instructor, students work these drafts through to final copies which then appear in New Beginnings.

Here are some pieces of writing from past editions of Threshold's Creative Writing anthology, New Beginnings. Also, please enjoy the creative covers of past editions of New Beginnings below. (scroll all the way down for 4 covers)

"Toto, I don't think were in Kansas and am I dizzy!"

I see myself living in a town as a little girl who sees something approaching....something bigger than a thunderstorm. It is a tornado! The little girl is me, Jessie, as a five year-old....a harmless little girl. I am outside playing and all of the sudden I hear a big bang. I am scared and run inside.

My mother had listened to the weather and said that we were going to have a tornado. I was too young to understand. We were living in New Jersey at the time. But I listened to what my mother told me, "You will be safe as long as you are with your father and me and are in the storm cellar."

We went to the storm cellar. It was the safest place to be at the time. The tornado was really scary to me, it was a twister. " I'm so glad that I am safe," I said. We peeked out and saw the gray tornado suck up houses, cars, and fences. We were so glad that it is not us! As we saw the eye of the tornado we knew that we made it.

Now that I am all grown up, I still think of that experience.  Just by seeing the tornado and its eye I should think, "Thank goodness I made it!" It will be in my mind and memory forever!

I think of this story as a tale of survival. Many people don't make it. Given all the tornadoes that have caused destruction across the world, I should be glad I'm alive.

- Jessie

  Elevator to nowhere

On the next floor I think I was scared after the elevator stopped because I thought it was going to crush me.  So I opened  the door thinking I was back where I had started, but I was on a strange floor because there where people dressed in pink cat outfits and there were tigers with orange and purple fur.  One of the women in the pink cat outfits looked at me and asked,  "Who are you?"

I answered, "My name is Diane and I was just on my way home from work and was going back to my dorm when I thought I'd stop at Virgin Records for a CD, but instead I ended up here instead.  I want know how to get back to my world and home before they get worried."

So the lady who told me her name was Ginger and said that I had taken the elevator to "cat world" by mistake.

So Ginger took me to her leader who was a panther named "Queen". Queen gave me a weird look and asked me why I was in their world so I told her my story.  Queen clicked her claws and the next thing I recalled was waking up in Virgin Records on the floor with no memory on how I got there and why I was on the floor of a crowded store.  So I got the CD I wanted and left. When I got home I had a headache and I found a piece of pink cat fur in my hair. I was confused about how a piece of pink cat fur had gotten into my hair!

- Jessica

  Deep-sixing the deep freeze......

In the summer of 2004 I agreed to participate in a medical study on the effects of cold on humans. I would be paid $300.00 a day and they reassured me that it was perfectly safe.   I agreed after I read  the contract and I signed it.  They told me that they hoped to freeze humans in cryogenic state. They hoped to regulate the temperature so I would not get hypothermic or frostbitten. Then I got ready and sat in the chair. Before I knew it something went wrong.....there was icy cold air and that was is the last thing I remembered.

I slowly awoke not knowing where I was and then I asked a doctor, "Where am I and why am I lying on a bed with a blanket over me?"

The doctor told me, "You are in the hospital and have been frozen for 25 years and it has taken us this long to be able to thaw you."  After a few hours I was released from the hospital.

The 2029 City of Cambridge was quite different from what I remembered.  I walked around the city and saw some strange stuff.  First, I saw computers driving cars and the people were just sitting in the cars reading newspapers.  The papers were quite different from what they were 25 years ago.  The pictures actually moved and also updated themselves as news happened.  I tried to find my family and checked where my house was. All of my family was still there. I caught up with them and told them my story. 

- Jeff

  A Story from one of those tacky tabloids....

I was working at my desk one day when my boss came to me with an assignment. This had been the first job that I could get a hold of after I got out of college and it paid well, but I wanted to get into a more serious branch of writing. I was looking to become a famous journalist and I am sad to say that writing articles for tabloids was not my idea of a dream job.

He came to me with the assignment and looked as though he had hit the jackpot. I wondered what sort of idiotic story I would have to write next, but just took it in stride.

"I just got a call from someone by the name of Thomas Brown with a story that will blow the socks off our competition", he said.

"Oh really? What is it this time? Was a mermaid found in someone's backyard in their pool or something?", I said sarcastically. Sadly, that was the story that I had to cover last week, but it ended up that the person that called in had someone dress as a mermaid just so that they could get noticed by the public.

"No nothing like that! I made sure that this one was legit."

I could tell that my boss did not like my sarcasm at all, but ignored it all together. I decided that I would wisely refrain from any other comments. I got into a positive frame of mind, which was hard to do, but I did it as best I could, and asked him what the story was about.

"This woman that called in said that she is a wife of a miner who had been digging in a mine 20 miles underground when he noticed something moving in the shadows. He followed it and found out that there was a whole society of Mole people living down there", he said with a look of triumph on his face.

I could tell that he was proud of what he had found out and thought that the competition would be left in the dust because of this article. He gave me the address of the woman's house and told me to go check the story out and get details. So I grabbed my pad, pencil, and tape recorder and was off.

Once I reached the house of this woman who had called in, I got out and stretched. As I was walking up the pathway I was thinking about how ridiculous this story seemed to me, but it was my job and I had to do it.

I knocked on the door and a young woman answered the door.

"Hello, are you Mrs. McCarthy?" I asked.

"Why yes I am, are you the reporter that I called for?"

"Yes I am, may I please come in?"

"Certainly, come right on in and make yourself at home" she said sweetly.

I entered her house which was very beautiful. I thought to myself that this seemed like a pretty normal household with a very kind and lucid hostess, unlike the man that I had met before about the mermaid. 

I was led into the living room and was offered a chair to sit in and something to drink. The husband came into the room shortly after Mrs. McCarthy had left to get the drinks from the kitchen. He greeted me and sat down.

Once the drinks were finally handed out and everyone was sitting comfortably, I started my normal routine.

"So tell me Mr. McCarthy, you saw this society of Mole people when you were working in the mine you are currently working in now?"

"Yes I did. It was hard to see down there, I only had my helmet light on and the creature I saw was just outside the beam of light. I first thought that it might have been another worker and I was prepared to yell down at him to get back to work, but something stopped me from doing so." Mr. McCarthy explained.

"What stopped you if I may ask?"

"Not sure to tell you honestly. I guess it was the way this thing moved around sort of hunched like. And it scurried off  when I tried to put my light up to it. So, I followed it."

I must admit that it did sound legit, but I still was skeptical. I decided that it was best to keep that thought to myself though. Most people, I had found out in this job, would not share the rest of their story with me unless I was willing to believe them, or willing to admit that there could be things like what they were describing out there in this world of ours.

"So how far down the mine did you actually go following this creature?" I asked.

"About twenty miles down. It is a pretty deep mine, but it has lots to offer, good sources of coal for trains and not to mention some precious stones that will be given away to charities that need them"

"When the creature finally came to a stop, what did you see?"

"It was pretty amazing. I saw a whole society of mole like people scurrying around, busy at their work"

"Their work?" I said trying to sound like it was just a normal question to ask.

"Yeah, I soon found out that these mole-like people were trying to help us with our mining. We had a few mysteries, before I found this community of mole people, concerning loads of coal and precious stones that mysteriously appeared in the morning. Whenever our work is done, we usually shop what we had mined off and so when we come back to work in the morning, the barrels that we put the coal and stones in are usually empty."

He looked me straight in the eye after that. I was thinking that he for sure caught me looking at him in disbelief, but once he was satisfied he looked away for a moment and then back at me.

"This is all very interesting. Do you have a picture of these creatures you are talking about? It is certainly not that I don't believe you, it is just that our paper likes to have pictures to go along with the stories that we do."

"Nope, I am sorry to say that I don't. If you would like me to I could try to get a picture of them?" Mr. McCarthy offered.

"That is very kind of you, but you need not to go to the trouble" I said.

I started to gather my things and stand up. The hostess and her husband had thanked me for coming and showed me out the door.

On the way home I started to think about the story I was just told. Could there really be a society of mole people? After my mind had danced around the notion of there actually being a society like that, I shook my head and told myself that my job was getting to me and laughed.

I arrived back at the office and came in through the door and sat down. My boss noticed, looking through his window, that I had come back. He got up from his desk and came out of his office to stare at me. It was about three seconds before I looked up to see him smiling.

"Well.....do we have a story?" he asked eagerly.

"Well , then I guess we do" I said.

He smiled broadly and said that he knew that there was something to tell her. He predicted that once we publish the article the paper would sell like hot cakes. I just nodded at him and smiled. There was no need to tell him what I thought because he already knew.

Later, when I was home, I thought about the story I covered today. I started to get an eerie feeling that things like that might exist and we might not even know it. I glanced out the window to rest my eyes because they were getting tired because I had been watching the TV so much that I was staring at it. Then, for a split second I saw a shadow cross by my window and it looked oddly like a mole. I closed my eyes and shook my head and thought I was just tired and my eyes were playing tricks on me.

- Katie

two poems students created by assembling words and phrases found in advertising:

dreams
memories in mind
wander the brain
imagine spiritual moments
relaxing beauty
up and away!
everything else is
your creative vision,
mysterious magic.
insight,
listen,
wow,
believe.

- Andy & Alexis

education
begins with
knowing that
parents give time,
love,
and never
doubt.

- Sarah and Jill

I feel....

Sometimes I feel like a dark, stormy, raging ocean that rushes onto the soft sandy shoreline, very hard, with no forgiveness during a big, gray thunder and lightning storm.

Other times I feel like a light, clear, spring rain shower that waters the flowers on the big, wide, green grass meadows of the countryside.

Most of the time I feel like a happy, little, white, windy cloud in the big blue sky in which I float as though it was my calm swimming pool.

There are times I feel like a firecracker that loves to show its unique, bright and elegant colors as I burst in the silent night over a park on a warm, midsummer's evening.

- Annie

and here are two poems that capture the wildness of the sea:

Ocean

the ocean winds
crash in on the islands
as the waves enter,
there comes a silence
on the islands
then a deep dark rush of wind
comes again
with a blow.

- Renee

the storm

as I stand on the white, sandy beach
I gaze into the glow of the lightning bolt
dancing on the waves as they lap onto the sand.
the wild winds spray froth from the ocean onto me.
I smell the salty air as water passes over me.
I am drenched from head to foot.
as I head for my cottage I hear the gulls screeching in the night.
in the warmth and light of my home I see the dark night
out my window
and I think of all the creatures struggling in the storm.

- Diane