Premiering now: In number seventeen from Prose. Radio, Jane's Addiction sees the ocean break on the shore, while in the city a group of writers from the site bring it back to soil with each of their own literary footprints.

Here's the link to the show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U33WX-dLTZ4

And here are all the pieces in the feature:

https://www.theprose.com/post/808204

https://www.theprose.com/post/807185/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/785150/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/783763/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/806394/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/808549/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/808564/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/808547

https://www.theprose.com/post/808080/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/808371/...

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

I tell myself it’s stupid and I can’t help but feel it anyway. A small flame nearly snuffed by the cynicism of our modern world, flickering, but there all the same: hope. Hurt. Bitter-sweet goodbye. An ending. The year is over and I know nothing really changes with the rising of the sun tomorrow. But if something had to end, then surely something else must begin– and that is hopeful, isn’t it?

I feed my tiny flame. I tell myself, this is our chance. I tell myself, I can change. I tell myself, this time will be different. The flame roars to life, a veritable forest fire where only a spark stood before. The sun rises and echoes my flame in its brilliance. I am bursting at the seams. Last year is over. Last year is over! I get to leave it all behind. I get to leave behind all of the small parts of me I’d begun to hate: the bitter parts, the angry parts, the anguished parts. I get to rewrite. Looking back on last year, it felt like I’d accomplished nothing. My negative self-talk had me convinced that just because I felt bitter, my life was, indeed, meaningless. Then, I looked at the photos.

Oh my God. I did so much. I illustrated and published my mother's children’s book last year. I renovated my house. I renovated a school building. I adopted two gorgeous flemish giant rabbits. I taught my 5-year-old to read. I planted a garden. I baked cakes. I rode horses on the beach. I went on a vacation. I celebrated 10 years of marriage. I climbed mountains. I lived outrageously hard. I loved outrageously hard.

So, if last year wasn’t the sad waste I’d thought, what magnificent miracles might happen this year? This year I plan only one thing: to be me– to be completely, perfectly myself in all of my bizarre, hopeful, forgiving to a fault, glory.

This year I will become, because this year…

I am willing.

Dearest Writers:

Over the past 12 months, members of our community have expressed their desire to publish a book but lack of traction with agents or publishers. Our mission is to see members of our community succeed and fulfill their dreams of becoming published authors.

Enter, The Prose Press:

https://theprose.com/p/press

In collaboration with one of the fastest-growing educational companies, we started The Prose Press to give up-and-coming authors the platform to successfully write and publish their work.

Over the next few months, we will be inviting aspiring authors to submit their work and start their publishing journey with The Prose Press and share key pieces of their journey with you – their learnings, conversations, milestones, and excerpts.

If you are interested in turning your working manuscript into a real book, reach out to us.

Thank you to our supporters and community members for making this possible.

https://theprose.com/p/press

Cheers,

Prose.

Don’t know where the number 700 stands in the scheme of things. Not really. Compared to infinity, it’s not much. Compared to one, it’s a bunch.

Why bring this up? Because when I finished my most recent Prose write-up (Messin’ With Time) I looked up and saw the number 699.

“Wow,” I thought. “Next up is 700.”

Seven-hundred of anything has gotta be a milestone of some sort.

Anyway, just want to thank y’all for readin’ my ramblings over the years: “The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.”

Until next time, write on, my Brothers & Sisters.

Write on.

Jim

These dark clouds won’t leave me be

I am standing all alone in my own battlefield

My only armour is my mind

The same mind that is the traitor

Show me how I can defeat myself

Without losing the best part of me

These dark clouds won’t leave me be

The darkness within is swallowing me

I know I can’t take too much more

It’s all starting to cause me to change

I know these changes are not appealing

These dark clouds won’t leave me be

I am drowning in my own mind

I can feel my happiness leaving me

I know I am alone

Alone with the presence of darkness.

Alex.

That's what your name would have been.

It's on your birth certificate.

Our Alex: strong, smart, and kind.

The name engraved in gold

On a coffin far too small.

My worldview has been shaped by many stories, but only The Witcher series, by Andrej Sapkowski, has left an indelible mark in my mind. That mark is as strong now as the day I first read the books. I shouldn’t have enjoyed the story. Its hero is eternally reluctant, every supporting character is flawed in a way that makes them hard to love, and the setting is a grisly mishmash of environmental and political dangers. Geralt, the hero, clings to his ingrained neutrality until Fate forces him into a quest to save the child he loves, a child who he did not want in the first place. It’s a dark tale that spends entire volumes dangling glimmers of light that never manifest into a happy ending. The story is at once too realistic and thoroughly drenched in fantasy. The Witcher’s life is no fairytale: he struggles, he loses, he grieves, and his every weakness is exploited. Geralt’s small successes and many failures parallel the adversities that we face in the real world. He dies at the end of the series, with his quest arguably left unfilled. As a lover of happy endings, those final few pages were hard to read.

That tragedy is what impressed me so vividly. Life is not easy, even in a fairytale. Having all the skills you need to survive doesn’t mean that survival is assured. We live in a world with dangers beyond our control, and although those dangers aren’t as grotesque as Geralt’s kikimora, they are just as lethal. Even heroes die eventually. Geralt’s neutrality, which I found so irritating at first, was an uncomfortable mirror of my own tendency to watch and wait, to fly under the radar of those many dangers. Geralt eventually learned to be proactive and face those dangers head on, and, surprisingly, he lost. Sometimes it takes watching the hero lose to realize that failure is better than inaction. He made the choice to soldier through the failures, to accept losing the battle, and then the war, so that he could die with a clear conscience.

I loved The Witcher’s story because it had a message that I needed to hear. It doesn’t promise happy endings or an easy journey, and it doesn’t promise that the supporting cast will always be loveable. It promises that the journey is worthwhile because it is necessary. It promises that even if life is peppered with one tragedy after another, there will still be glimmers of light flickering in the darkness. Happy endings are not guaranteed, but I’ve learned to enjoy those glimmers of hope when they come. I’ve learned to soldier through my failures and disappointments. Like Geralt, even if the ending isn’t what I wanted, I plan to die with a clear conscience.

When I was eighteen I found a copy of The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks on the bedside table of my roommate in the psychiatric ward. I was immediately struck by how easy it would be to read, and perhaps, finish, this novel. My roommate was possibly, and this is not the textbook term, on Mars, and would not notice that this book had gone missing. At the time, I hadn’t read a book in three years, of any kind. My depression made it impossible to penetrate the depths of anything beyond a Facebook post. But The Last Song? Come on. I would have to be on Jupiter to not finish this one.

I didn’t finish the book.

Some time later in college I started reading again. My mental illness, however, wasn’t gone. On a particularly sad winter day in which I was withdrawing heavily from an antipsychotic medication, I decided to miss class. Then I realized it would be my fourth one, and I would be penalized. I raced into the classroom, an hour late.

The class I was destined, perhaps at this point in the semester, to fail, was Contemporary Literature. We were reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. The class contained six people and the professor. I hadn’t done the reading for that week. I listened, spellbound, as a man in my class discussed this fine work of literature. I couldn’t fathom having these opinions. The man speaking was sophisticated and well-rounded. As my withdrawing brain struggled to read over the pages I’d miss, I decided to really read this book.

I finished the book.

White Teeth for me was about the wit, especially the dialogue. I loved the banter of the characters. I loved how this novel wove the characters together in an intricate way. I went to my local coffee shop and brought a pencil. I underlined every piece of witty dialogue, so that the book was filled with mostly underlines when I was done. Such is good literature: every word has its place, its unity in solidifying the piece as a whole.

Reading changed the dialogue in my head. Inside my brain now is a pencil that jots down notes for later use in my writing. I am constantly mentally underlining what people say to me. There are gaps in time that I can’t remember, when I couldn’t put pencil to paper, either to underline or write my own work. But that changed with White Teeth.

I am now someone who sits writing at my computer every morning and evening. And I am someone who reads a fair amount of literature.

I am neither the young woman in the psychiatric hospital on Mars or Jupiter. And perhaps I will never be as sophisticated as the man who could dissect White Teeth with ease. But I am a reader. It makes me better, and my own brand of sophisticated.