Engaging with a freelance creative writing consultant offers writers a valuable opportunity to delve into the Kafkaesque elements in their work and receive expert feedback to navigate the complexities that this unique style entails. Kafkaesque writing is characterized by its exploration of surreal, oppressive, and absurd themes, often presenting a labyrinthine narrative that challenges both the reader and the writer.

A creative writing coach well-versed in Bram Stoker's narrative techniques, particularly his use of fragmented narratives and primary sources, can offer valuable guidance to writers interested in experimenting with similar methods in their own work.

For writing coaches and their clients, Gaston Bachelard's insights into the nature of imagination, the importance of spatial metaphors, and the intertwining of memory and poetic imagery can offer invaluable guidance. His philosophy encourages a deeper engagement with the subjective and imaginative aspects of writing, urging writers to explore beyond the surface of the literal and the rational.

For many, autumn awakens the impulse to write, to explore the depths of personal experience, to make sense of our internal rhythms that mirror the external world. But harnessing this desire to create something tangible can be elusive, like trying to catch the leaves that flutter from branch to ground. This is where the guidance of a skilled writing coach can be invaluable.

How do our online writing tutors do what they do so well? What research-based methods do we use to teach our students? Here’s our take on the first five effective instructional practices identified in the influential 2007 report titled "Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools.”

Robert Coover’s Briar Rose (1997) is a short but dense little fiction that plumbs the depths of the Sleeping Beauty legend, foregrounding the age-old patterns at the heart of its many variations.

Like many of McKillip’s best works, The Changeling Sea (1988) reads like a fable. It has the simple, classic feel of a story that’s been told a million times, repeated around fires and at bedtimes until all its edges have been rounded out and its contours are so familiar you think you might have dreamed them up yourself.

Ransom tells the story of Achilles: beloved hero of the Trojan War, bereaved of his companion Patroclus. But this isn’t the conventional tale of Achilles’ rise to fame, or even of his triumphs in battle. Instead, it’s an account of his reckoning with the loss of his soulmate, who dies on the field as a by-blow of our hero’s own pride.

The Vorrh is admittedly a lot to handle. It’s also an absolutely brilliant work of art. Brian Catling’s pan-medium creative background shines through to stunning effect in every inch of his prose; his style in this novel is immediate, tactile, shamelessly sprawling and descriptive.