Two roads diverged on the path I took,

And sorry I could not take both

And only being me, I checked my phone

And searched for where I was,

And where the road may have ended up;

Then searched the other, so as to be fair,

With it having perhaps the better chance,

Because it was short and led somewhere;

Though as for that idea of going there

They had destinations about the same,

And both roads that morning equally lay

Without traffic in my way

Oh, I kept the first for another day,

Yet knowing how often I was late,

I doubted if I would ever go upon the slower route.

I shall be telling this without a sigh

Somewhere hours and hours past:

Two roads diverged on a path, and I-

I took the one that was quicker,

And that has made all the difference. (In getting to work on time-Hooray!)

I love many of Robert Frost's poems and the classic "The Road Not Taken" is one of my favorites. However in the modern age, I can't imagine picking which way to go based on the amount of wear or travel that has occurred on the path. The symbolism of the original poem is grand, But, I wanted to showcase that in this day and age, choices are impacted so much by technology and efficiency. In this case-how much time would each road take to get one's destination? 

Morning, Prosers, 

This weeks TBT is a hat tipping tribute to Mr. Mark Twain. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

I reckon Samuel Langhorne Clemens changed ‘is name t’Mark Twain simply ’cause it just rolled off th’tongue bett’r.

He was born on th’thirtieth day o’ November in the year one-thousand, eight-hundred ‘n’ thirty-five, in the United States of America, on the same day Halley’s Comet made i’s way t’Earth. And y’know what? Mr. Twain done predicted he’d die th’same day that comet returned, and that he did, on th’twenty-first day o’ April in th’year one-thousand, nine-hundred ‘n’ ten. He was a talker, a entrepreneur, a publisher, ‘n’ a writer, most important.

Mr. Twain cooked up some wicked-fine novels includin’ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and i’s sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I heard dem lit’rary scholars been r’ferrin’ to that last one as “The Great American Novel,” or somethin’ like that. ‘Nyway, Mr. Twain was born in a place called Missouri, and that ’fected th’way he talked. He was real smart, though, ‘specially with language ‘n’ words, so he could talk different, too. But he talked a lot like this in that book ‘bout Huck, and made history for writin’ that story in what those scholars be callin’ “American-Southern vernacular.” It was also real contr’versial, and remained that way ‘n the years after publishin’ it, ‘cause it said what people nowadays callin’ th’“n-word.” I would spell it out here ’n this post but I lack th’balls Mr. Twain had.

But well b’fore writin’ ‘bout Tom ‘n’ Huck, this man got ‘is big break with a comedic tall tale titled, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” It was published in a New York weekly edition of The Saturday Press on th’eighteenth day o’ November in th’year one-thousand, eight-hundred ‘n’ sixty-five. Mr. Twain was a scientist and a entrepreneur ‘s well. He was good friends with this man called Nikola Tesla, or somethin’ like that, and they was always hangin’ out in his lab. Mr. Twain patented three inventions. So pretty soon, Mr. Tesla’s arch-nem’sis, Mr. Tom Edison, was shootin’ movies o’ Mr. Twain. It was all v’ry excitin’.

As you may’ve guessed, he was makin’ quite a lot o’ monies from ‘is creations, but sadly Mr. Twain also lost a bunch o’ those monies from investin’ in otha creations, like ‘is typesettin’ machine and publishin’ house. All in all, I reckon it’s perfectly safe t’say Mr. Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was one ‘o th’most legendary writers ‘n’ pe’haps, poss’bly people o’ all time, ‘n’ ’is yestelated deathday d’mands some proper r’spect.

I reckon that’s it.

Did you enjoy reading this week's TBT? You'll love seeing the accompanying blog piece with gorgeous graphics over on blog.theprose.com later today. 

Until next Thursday, Prosers. 

Prose. 

Good morning, Prosers,

We’d like to introduce you to a new weekly feature, Writer Wednesday.

This feature focuses on the wonderful words coming from our Letters from Prison contributors. Some of you may not be aware of this initiative yet, but by the end of this post you will be!

Each and every Wednesday, Sammie and Paul visit prison and teach creative writing to the residents there. We then bring their words to Prose and post them in the Letters from Prison Portal where members of the Prose community comment on them, providing much needed support and feedback which we then take back into prison and share with the residents.

This program has provided the inmates with a much needed release whilst improving their spelling, grammar, self-confidence, and has had a profound effect on their mental health, too.

This new weekly feature is to celebrate some of the cracking words that escape the bars and make their way onto Prose.

From the start I should have knew

That your comfort wasn’t true

I’d engaged in a war that I couldn’t win

And I carried your plague like a heartless sin

~@lowerWESTLEY

From: Alice In Wonderland

You have your own will, I will ruin it

I am not the needle, I am the poison inside

~@Carmen

From: Satan’s Twin

The fear of the abyss

Makes all of my bodily fluids

That’s rancid, run down my leg

~@Squeakypeewee01

From: The Abyss

If you like what you read here, we encourage you to check out the Portal, get commenting and supporting this amazing program.

Until next Wednesday, Prosers,

Prose.

Morning, Prosers, 

It's time for our regular instalment, Two for Tuesday. 

This week, after having a number of users asking this very question, we thought we'd share with you two tips for increasing your exposure and readership, both inside and outside Prose. 

Buckle up, take notes and prepare to be bowled over with the simplicity of these two pointers. 

1) Share. 

Sounds simple right? Yet many people overlook this exact thing. If you're already using mainstream social networks, leveraging your audience there will help you get more reads on Prose. We as a team do this with our own work. Not only does it increase reads, it also increases the likelihood that those visitors will keep popping back and reading your work without further prompts. Share to any platform you can. Text your friends the link. Email your contacts. If you get into a healthy share routine, these things won't take you long at all. Sharing the same piece multiple times in timed increments also helps. For instance, the "shelf life of a Tweet is up to 24 minutes," so even if you have hundreds of thousands of followers, if they don't see it in those crucial minutes, they probably never will. 

2) Interact / Engage

This might sound dumb, but it really is key. You get what you give. Especially on a platform like Prose. Prose is single-handedly the best platform for engagement and interaction. But to build up that trusty base of readers you have to give a little first. Read, comment, like, share. Show that support to your peers and they will support you. Plus, who doesn't want to read the awesome wordporn found upon our pages? 

While these two tips sound very self-explanatory, they are often overlooked. Give them a try, slot them into your routine, we promise it'll do the trick. 

Before we go we'd like to ask two things of you. 

Firstly, if you don't already, please follow us and encourage those around you to follow us. We promise we are not being attention whores! This is the easiest way for us to reach all of you with big announcements and such, and may help those of you who have questions or requests. If you're already following Prose, thank you, you could help us by reposting our posts so that we catch those that do not follow us. 

Secondly, and lastly, we know that there has been some confusion over coins. Coins are our in-house currency, paid for on the Bookstore with either PayPal or credit/debit card. Prose does not hold any of your payment details, these are completely secure with PayPal only. These funds can only be purchased on the website, but will be spendable on iOS in our next update (this is imminent). One coin is equal to one cent. Once you have your coins, you can buy premium content (books and shorts) from the Bookstore. These coins are shared between the author and Prose, and the author always comes out on top. Not only are you supporting your fellow Prosers' hopes and aspirations of being able to write full-time, but you are also enabling our small and humble team of 5 to work above and beyond full-time hours to continue writing the next chapters for the history of Prose and the freedom of its writers. We hope we can count on your support. 

Thank you to every single one of you for being here, and for making Prose the absolute shit. 

Until next time, Prosers, 

Prose. 

Good morning, Prosers,

For this week’s Monday Motivation we are bringing you a brand-new challenge.

This will be a monthly challenge, aptly named, Prose Challenge of the Month.

Each month, we will set you all a prompt within a Portal of our choosing. We then give you the entire duration of the challenge to create your literary splendor. After the challenge expires, the team will then take a look at specific data - number of reads, likes, reposts, and comments - along with reading the entries to ensure superior content. From there, we will choose 15 pieces to be included in our new Prose Book of the Month. These books will be made up of your content, and will be sold on Prose for 250 coins. To find out whether your entry made it, you will have to grab yourself a copy.

So, what do you get in return?

If you are one of the lucky 15, you will receive 5% royalties for the lifetime of the book. This means non-Partners can also earn themselves some Prose coin, as anyone can enter. We think this is a new, quick, easy, and exciting way to become a published, professional author, and what better way to do that than with Prose‽

Let’s take a look at the first Challenge of the Month of many:

Prose Challenge of the Month #1: Write about losing your innocence. Fifteen entries will be featured in a Prose Original Book of the Month, whereby each winner will take 5% lifetime royalties. You must purchase the book to discover its authors, who will be determined by objective data (reads, likes, reposts, comments) and by team vote to ensure reader satisfaction. When sharing to social media, please use the hashtags “itslit,” “getlit,” and “ProseChallenge.”

Share your lost innocence with us, now.

What better Monday Motivation than a brand-new challenge and a way to earn money and bragging rights when you become a professional author?

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.

Good morning, Prosers,

It’s week fifty-one of the Prose Challenge of the Week! Last week saw you all writing Thanksgiving inspired pieces. We had shed-loads of superb entries to read, so thank you everyone.

This week’s Challenge of the Week is slightly different. We’d like to introduce to you all, Prose Originals: Collabowrite.

So how does this work? This week’s challenge will determine the first author in our Prose Collabowrite Book. A book that has one chapter published each week, written by a different Proser each time. Everything will be kept top secret until that chapter has been published and you can all get your hands on the newest chapter of the book.

Each author will receive 50% royalties on their specific chapter for the lifetime of the book, and you do not need to be a partner, or over the age of 18 to get involved. The first contributor will be determined by this week’s challenge, and thereafter will be chosen by the Prose team based on a number of criteria: engagement, writing quality, and writing content. If you would like to get involved in this cool opportunity, please pop a comment below and if we choose you, we will message you and invite you to write the subsequent chapter.

One more thing, this week’s challenge will be judged purely upon likes, reads, comments, and shares. Don’t worry, there is method in our madness.

So, let’s take a look at this week’s prompt:

Prose Challenge of the Week #51: Collabowrite. Write the synopsis for a Prose Collaborative Book where the genre is Psychological Thriller. The winner will be chosen purely on reads, likes, comments, and shares. See Challenge of the Week Post #52 for more details. The winner will receive $100 and 50% royalties for their chapter. Runner-up will receive 1000 coins. When sharing to Twitter, please use the hashtag #ProseChallenge.

Get writing now

Back to the winner of week forty-nine. We have read all of your entries and thoroughly enjoyed every single one. There can only be one winner and one runner up, however, and after much deliberation the runner up, and the recipient of 1000 coins is, @ASelfCalledL with their piece “Poison and Blade.” Congratulations! Now for the champion of the challenge, our winner this week is, @JamesMByers with their piece “More Gravy.” Congratulations to you, we will be in touch shortly to arrange transfer of your winnings!

That’s all for this week, here’s to a week filled with all things Prose!

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose. 

Greetings Prosers, 

It's Monday and time for yet another Monday Motivation. 

We'd like to begin with a quote that is relevant for the news we are about to share with you today. 

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." ~ Confucius

As a team we always want to be moving forward with the development of both the business and the technology, however, we identify that often, to move forward, we have to take a step back too. 

With that thought in mind, we have to address the Android application. As many of you know, there haven't been updates to Android for quite some time, and this is because we currently only have one developer - who is slowing down time to fit more than twenty-four hours into one day. He's in his code-cave, ferociously tapping away at those keys, banishing bugs and laying the foundations for this wonderful community here. Unfortunately, though he might be almost superhuman, he most certainly isn't Superman. We have encountered some issues that are causing global freezes and speed issues across all platforms, and that is because Android needs some serious love and attention. It is because of this that we have made the hard decision to pull the app from the Google Play Store to allow us to take it all apart, blow a fresh and renewed life into it, and unleash it back out there. This is a hiatus, not a permanent removal. 

With this being said, once we have ironed out the remaining bugs on iOS and Web, added some more features etc. we will be working on Android and bringing you all the feature upgrades, speed upgrades, and generally a better functioning application. 

We don't want to leave all Android users in the lurch, though. Prose is optimised for your phone browsers and your tablet browsers too. You access it in exactly the same way you access Prose on a PC - theprose.com. 

If any of you, as always, notice bugs or things acting strangely, get in touch with us, we will add it to the bug list, and our wonderful King of Tech, will work his butt off to make sure things get fixed and resolved in a timely manner. 

We hope that you understand that with a team of only 5, (1 tech, 1 design, 2 customer service / social media / marketing, 1 finance) we are really working hard to improve Prose for your pleasure and outlet. We have big goals that, with your support as a community, we know we can achieve. 

Prose is one of the most beautiful corners of the internet, it's badass, it's gnarly, it's more than we as a team ever envisioned. We will continue to be transparent with you, and keep you updated with all the latest developments as and when they happen. 

Until next Monday, Prosers, we'd like to leave you with one more Confucius quote:

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." ~ Confucius 

Prose. 

Greetings, Prosers,

Today's Throwback Thursday is a little different from the norm. The wonderful @A, is taking over for a reflective piece, and it's a treat. Over to you, A.

Many people around the world are feeling discouraged by the state of politics, especially American politics. So much division, resentment, and arrogance. But you know what, Prosers? Fuck it. FUCK IT. Government may suck right now, but guess what? Prose.

Words are our most powerful sword and shield. Words intertwine what we think, what we say, and what we do. Words are particularly crucial in the realm of politics. After all, imagine a gathering of mute politicians. Not a whole lot would get done. Words give us the power to change our world. If language is magic, then sentences are our spells. We can use them wisely.

We do not have to be posting longwinded political speeches on Prose to accomplish what government cannot, or at least has not. Simply sharing our souls, our rawest, deepest, most authentic feelings and thoughts about literally anything, is enough. Being honest, open, and interactive is enough.

Being human is tough, to say the least. We experience so many traumas in a lifetime, and the only way to relieve ourselves from their aftermath is to release them via words. That is the main reason people see therapists; not to uncover some high-level equation, formula, or algorithm that will eradicate and overrule unhealthy emotions, but rather simply to say the words we want to say within a loving, nonjudgmental context.

We want to say these words in public, physical and digital, but the psychological status quo is just so judgmental and afraid. Try writing about losing your virginity on Facebook or Twitter. It will likely be as easy as telling your colleagues about everything on your mind that is causing you worry right now. But here on Prose, we are all naked, and we are all wearing our unique masks to ensure an optimally open and embracing environment.

Simply being authentic and honest, sharing your most intense insights and emotions, thoughts and feelings, in the form of words can suffice. Add that with being nonjudgmental and understanding, listening to your fellow Prosers and acknowledging their own bravery and brilliance, and encouraging people you know to join, and voila – you have something that can be more effective than government from a humanitarian, cultural standpoint.

Prose is a global community of radically open, creative, and loving individuals. Remember that being a part of this community is doing humanity a service, and that the more this community grows and the tighter it bonds, the closer we get to uniting humankind for good.

Until next week, Prosers,

Prose.

If you, like so many others, don’t want to read a bunch of legalese, then this post is for you. With the launch of the bookstore comes a few additions to our terms and conditions pertaining to payments and refunds. This post brings you the lowdown without the legal jargon.

Payments

Once your wallet funds exceeds 5000 coins from your content sales, you may request to “cash out.”

So, how do you get them? Well, all you need to do is simply email, payments@theprose.com with the subject line “Cash Request.” In the body of your email, include your username, your PayPal email, and the number of coins from your partner content that you wish to liquidate.

We will then send your requested payment from our business PayPal account no later than the 3rd of each month.

** Remember: 1 coin = 1 cent (1/100 of 1 USD)

Refunds

Prose do not offer refunds on coins that you purchase from the coinstore, only on the coins that you spend directly on Partner content.

We do not offer refunds on short stories or chapter purchases.

You are eligible for a refund on purchased books as long as

A) You purchased the book within thirty (30) days

And

B) You have read less than ten percent (10%) of the book content.

For any refund requests, all you need to do is email us at refunds@theprose.com with the subject line “Refund Request” and we will get back to you within 7 working days. Depending on the nature of the email, you may receive a response sooner. Make sure to include as much detail within the email body, along with your username, to ensure swift handling of your request.

N.B If you paid for Partner Content but received no such Content in return, for whatever reasons, then please directly message the Partner, who is responsible to respond and resolve the issue.

Greetings Prosers,

We hope you are all enjoying the shiny, bright and lovely new Bookstore that finally launched today!

Our launch day extravaganza continues with us announcing the winners of the challenges over the 7 day countdown. Without further ado, here they are:

The very first challenge, which was a challenge to write the first chapter of your bestseller. This was won by @RichWithey who wins 1,000 coins to spend in the bookstore for his entry ‘Yesterday had 48 hours’.

The second challenge was to retweet our pinned Tweet. We chose two people at random, who are @Confusheyuss and @Cameolover93 – both of whom win 500 coins each to spend in the bookstore.

Friday’s challenge was to share our post on Facebook. The winner of 1,000 coins to spend in the bookstore is @Firdaus.

In the challenge to like our post on Instagram and tag friends, we had two winners of 500 coins each. The lucky buggers who get the shiny prizes are @misslittle and @Lynn

Sunday’s challenge was to write a micropoem describing your favourite book, without using its name. The winner of 1,000 shiny bookstore coins is @Cajen for what we believe was The Martian in ’locusts (silver ones).

The winner for Monday’s task was simply tasked with getting someone to join Prose. @Izzy_A rocked that and has won the 1,000 coin prize.

In our final challenge, we went all out and decided to give away 2,000 coins. The person that shared the post as many times on social media as possible, tagging us so we could see, was @JayChimera.

Congratulations to you all, and thank you not only for making Prose what it is, but also for joining in and helping us spread the word this week and we hope for many weeks to come. We will credit the coins to the winners within the next few days.

Prose