Alden began writing for The Young and the Restless as a script writer in 1974 while researching her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

With Alden as head writer, the show lost about two million viewers (most of the loss occurred in 2004 when Alden co-wrote the show with longtime Y&R scribe and producer John F. Smith), but all soap operas during that period experienced a similar scale of massive audience erosion.

[citation needed] She quit The Young and the Restless in late 2006, and was then hired by Brian Frons, president of ABC Daytime, to consult on its serials All My Children, General Hospital and One Life to Live.

On September 21, 2016, Daytime Confidential reported that after ten years since being with the show, Alden had been hired to be story consultant at Y&R, under Sally Sussman's tenure as Head writer.

[6] On July 31, 2017, Daytime Confidential announced that both Alden and Sussman would be departing from the show, with Mal Young being named as the new head writer.