Creative Writing Strategies

Time takes the blame for every ruin. At Helmsley, somebody gave the order. Last week we stood on the East Cliff at Whitby. This week we go inland, to a market town on the southern edge of the North York Moors, where the River Rye comes down out of the hills, and to a castle that was broken on purpose. There are two poems here. The first is more than four hundred years old and is spoken by a city that has vanished. The second is my own, about Helmsley Castle, from North Yorksh

Words by Alden Carrow Solitude is not a punishment; it is an instrument. We are social animals. We thrive on connection. Yet here is the paradox at the heart of every writer: we write about human connection, but we can only do it well once we have stepped far enough back to see it clearly. Think of a painter. To paint the mountain, they cannot be standing inside the mountain; they must stand some miles away. Solitude provides that distance. And the best place I know to find i

There is a tarmac path up Orrest Head in the Lake District — a smooth, accessible route that allows everyone, regardless of ability, to reach the summit and share in the view. Self-publishing is, to my mind, the literary equivalent of that path. It is not a lesser route. It is a deliberately built one, designed to let more people through. The Old Gatekeepers and the New Landscape In the past, the traditional publishing industry functioned much like the central massif of the L