I’ll start with a caveat- I’m not saying that I have this figured out. I’m just saying that the struggle is real.

When my book was published I spent far too many clicks of the refresh button checking out the sales ranking. I felt like the rats in those experiments we read about in High School, the ones who had their pleasure centers stimulated every time they pressed a certain button. The rats would forgo food and water in order to press that button hour after hour, day after day. Sometimes they would die from it. I pressed the button. Sometimes the reward was there, sometimes it was a punch in the gut. That’s hard to take on an empty emotional stomach, I’ll tell you.

Now that Nearly Orthodox has been on the shelves for almost a year I don’t refresh as often but I do still refresh, hoping for the stimulation of the pleasure center, more often getting the punch in the gut. My publisher is happy with the progress of the book. I am happy with the quality of the writing and the effort I took to make it beautiful. Mostly. I suppose if we, as writers, are completely happy with the finished product always and forever then perhaps we’re doing it wrong. So, there’s that.

Being “post publishing” has lead to more angst that it took to get me to the editor’s “in” box. It’s more than it took me to wait those months for a contract to come and more than the angst that comes when the book first releases. As time wears on I wish I could say that good sense has led me to not care how anyone else’s book is doing or how often someone else gets an article published but alas, I’m not quite there yet.

That being said, I have learned some things (in theory, at least if not yet practice).

...

Stay tuned for the full article by author, blogger, and Prose. Partner Angela Doll Carlson (@mrsmetaphor) later today on The Official Prose. Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.

Where do authors come from? Writing has often been described as a form of madness. So perhaps it comes from an emotional trauma or a blow to the head in childhood. It’s certainly a mental illness but I believe it is a gentle kind of madness and comes in the form of a compulsion. I don’t think the writer has much say in it at all. I believe he can’t help himself; he has to write.

Writers are notoriously prone to extreme vanity, alcoholism, self-indulgent bouts of depression, drug use, an addiction to eccentric clothing, lack of social skills, womanizing, divorce, and extreme financial irresponsibility. Unfortunately – there are also some negative things.

You don’t wake up one morning and say ‘I think I will become an author today.’ It’s more of a gradual progression towards the desk and the typewriter. There are words and sentences and stories flying around in your head and if you don’t write them down you know you will never find peace. Eventually you surrender to the realization that you don’t have a choice and you begin writing. This is fueled by the vanity that there are people out there that will be interested in what you have to say. In most cases this is not true. I have been lucky in this regard, but I had an advantage.

I am very fortunate that people find detectives interesting. An astonishing five out of the UK’s top ten bestsellers last year were whodunits. Writing a story about a private detective is a definite advantage. Having limited choice as to my subject matter, because I strongly believe a writer should write about what he knows, I created a fictional Bangkok private detective. It was the obvious choice because that’s what I am. This process has often led me to wonder why the audience craves such characters and I have reached some conclusions.

...

Tune in to The Official Prose. Blog later today for the complete article by international bestselling author Harlan Wolff at: blog.theprose.com/blog.

The month of June brings with it the last dregs of spring and the “dog days” of summer which become shorter as the Earth tilts and spins on its axis. This year, it also brings with it boundless change, transition, metamorphosis. Evolution in all of its forms- both physical and intangible.

But what does it mean to evolve?

According to @JillyBoyd, “Evolution is the dawn of time, the moments where we were nothing but a distant fact and Earth and the universe were nothing but molecules waiting for their moment. Evolution is now. Evolution is history, is future, is you and your life and the lives of others and change and regret and power and remorse and revolution and rapture and ecstasy...”

What does evolution mean to you?

Last month we asked the entire community to tell us their own tales of change. Of the 34 entries, 25 Prosers demonstrated a strong command of language, creativity, and originality. These 25 pieces of the most intense and beautiful pieces of poetry and prose are now live- available for download- in our second e-book release.

For the month of July, rather than publishing Volume III of the Prose Anthologies, we are releasing a special Haiku edition e-book. For your chance to be published in this first Haiku edition, please enter the following challenge anytime this month: https://theprose.com/challenge/2352.

In the meantime, to find out who made the cut, get your copy of Volume II of The Prose Anthologies on Amazon today:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011F7XYP4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

(For Prosers in the U.S.)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B011F7XYP4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

(For Prosers in the U.K.)

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B011F7XYP4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

(For Prosers in Canada)

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B011F7XYP4

(For Prosers in Australia)

I was sixteen and the beach was my backyard-- or had been when I was a child. The waves where choppy and rolling, in sets of three, that didn't look that intimidating at the time. My twin and I swam out like we always did, trying to get past the waves, to calmer water we could tread; but the Atlantic-lick along the center of the peninsula wasn't having it.

The further we swam the faster the waves seemed to roll in, the larger they seemed to get. Twin turned back before I did; too stubborn and determined NOT to be beaten back to the beach by the ocean's osculations, so I kept swimming.

CRASH. A wave would hit me in the face and push me back in a tumble through water deep enough I could no longer touch the bottom. Just as soon as I righted myself to the surface to suck down a breath and throw my arms out, with cupped hands, to try to press forward-- CRASH, another wave would roll me back and under once more.

Clinging to my determination, I leveled myself again in time to gasp for air and stare-a-blink at the impending crash of a bubble-clawed wall of water to counter my stroke forward. I'd already lost, but had yet to realize it until that third wave plunged me into a rip-current, snatched by the under-toe.

It wasn't the first time I had the thought, "I'm going to drown" but it was the first time the water itself was holding me down.

Trying to swim to the surface felt a lot like the time I'd dove (head first) off a fifty-foot cliff-- when I was nine, but this time it wasn't the deep, I wasn't fighting distance, I was fighting the rumbling roll of the ocean which kept biting down on my ascent.

I didn't make it all the way to the surface, before my lungs felt like they were caving in on themselves, and my veins throbbed like they too were shriveling from the lack of oxygen. I had to take a breath. I stopped fighting the water, and started fighting myself-- I fought the impulse to inhale, until I could feel the next crash of bubbling water rage past the surface to massage my face...

I took a breath of ocean. The salty-foamed water I sucked into my lungs stung, but must have had just enough oxygen to keep me from drowning. I had a chance!

Exhausted, I once again tried to swim, but this time toward the shore, following the roll of water as it hit me, letting it take me where it was going. Unknowing of my twin, walking the beach searching for my head to pop up enough for her to see where I was, walking further and further as the current carried me down the beach.

Just when I thought I couldn't swim anymore, was almost ready to give into the ocean which saw fit to teach me a lesson-- the hard way, when another wave tumbled be into the sand. I had earth on my side and that was all it took to give me the strength to try to stand against the crashing walls of water and take a real breath.

I coughed and crawled my way to shore from there, beaten back by the mighty Atlantic. I crept up the shoreline until I could no longer feel the waves splashing my feet, until it was just a peaceful sway of lapping water to wet the beach front. There I sat. Turned back to face the seemingly angry ocean, huffing to catch my breath.

I shook my head. Not out of regret, but a sense of triumph and evolution. The ocean gave me perspective. It was so beautiful, yet so dangerous. The crash of waves could kill you, or save you-- it all depended on whether or not you fought against it.

I may not have said it out loud, but I knew I would swim the Atlantic again, with a new found respect and appreciation.

|| another_proser ||

Free will.

That's a joke.

Or is it?

Let's talk about "free will", some faiths say that all is written...

If that's so, then all the decisions that any of us have made, haven't even been ours to make. "That's the way it was decided to be".

Many say that we are granted free will. And yet, it's all written by one who knows all, the beginning and the end.

Same story.

What if we are the creators?

And it is our will that forms this world.

This reality.

What if it is our free will to believe that things are real, that makes them real?

Tangible and intangible

Many things

I think one hundred words are a bit much

But I shall try

A list, of no less than sixty-three words

Butter

Reading Minds

Care

To be adored

Power

Knowledge

Baked potatoes

Pasta

World History

Learning

Friends

Eurovision

Music

Vocaloid

History in general

Steampunk

Anime

Hetalia

Europe

Maps

Globes

Geography

Mountains and rivers and streams

Colors

Black

Silver

Writing

Staying on Prose. for longer and longer

A mended heart

Peace

Action

Magic

Passion

Better hearing

Being able to speak all the languages of the world

Speaking French and Spanish and German and Danish

Love

FIN.

Do you remember

The feeling of

Soaring

Through the clouds

As you dream

You get

That sensation of

Your stomach dropping

To your feet

And light headed

Giddiness

That hides

The things you

Don't want to see

The world slows down

So that you can

See the water droplets

Forming on your

Outstretched arms

And when I wake

That feeling won't leave

Because I wake

In your arms

I know what this is

But I don't want to say

Because I fear it will

End.