The Daily K: I’m all alone on this cell phone…

The Daily K: I’m all alone on this cell phone…

“A writer works alone, indoors, in a room, on a chair, with the door shut.
It has been said that writing is a rat race in which you never get to meet the other rats.”
–Paul Theroux

Truman Capote felt that he did his best work in motel rooms.

Ben Franklin, who owned the first bathtub in America, liked to write while immersed in it.

John Cheever worked in a windowless basement room.

Raymond Carver preferred to work inside his car.

Not all writers favored a sitting position. Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote while recumbent. Truman Capote described himself as “a completely horizontal writer.” By contrast, Lewis Carroll and Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up. So did Ernest Hemingway after injuring his back in a plane crash.

Writers with full-time jobs often have difficulty finding time to write.

Sources:

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2006/05/work-habits-of-highly-successful_23.html

http://www.celineroque.com/productivity/the-writers-life-the-importance-of-solitude-and-fresh-air/
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Excerpt from Mikel K’s memoir, “Baking Banana Bread From Scratch:”

“I think you live freer than anyone I have ever met.”– Michelle Wiley

Hi Mikel, I like it how you promote the realities of life, and associate this with your art, so that your love for writing stands out.–Susan Abraham

“I could read you all day long…”–Holly

“Mikel, Lucky for us, you don’t take the easy way, and get a straight job that leaves no room for writing.–Stephanie

Mikel, You are true blue (as the Aussies would say) a unique soul born to write. Thank you for the expression you provide; so many of us wish we could do the same… it’s way more than just having a story to tell: it’s a compulsion, a must do that won’t abate. I am inspired by you.
–Gen Cole

“Ask not what your nap can do for you, ask what you can do for your nap.”
–Mikel K

Baking Banana Bread From Scratch
By Mikel K

After lunch, I hear the sound of trash cans rumbling on the street; I am thankful for garbage men, just like I am thankful for the food that I have just eaten, though I forgot to pray over it. I really want to pray over my food, before I eat it; I think that it is a good idea to give thanks before eating, whether you believe in anything, or not.

Colossians 4:5-6

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

From The K Page: I like, and respect, this: “At Carcinogenic Poetry, we are not concerned with your publishing history or acquired degrees, we just want the stuff you believe in.

“Who cares if you went to Yale, or Iowa, or NYU, or Georgia State? Does your poetry have heart, and soul; and even more important, does your poetry interest me…does it grab me by the balls, and MAKE ME read it, or am I yawning through it because I’m reading it because of what school you went to, or because you are dead and “they” say that I am supposed to read you?”

This guy Carcinogenic Poetry guy makes a great deal of sense to me.

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“A Republican was somebody who couldn’t enjoy eating unless he knew somebody else was hungry.”
–P. 21 “The Liars’ Club,” by Mary Karr

I am baking the sixth banana bread, from scratch, that I have ever baked in my life, right now. A lady on the internet gave me a simple recipe, and I have been making banana bread for myself, and for my friends, and family, with great results for the past several weeks. Everybody thinks that I am a great baker of banana bread. This makes me feel good. I like it when people like me.

This banana bread that I am cooking right now, is a little different than the last five that I baked; I am experimenting a little bit. I am using Xylitol instead of sugar. I am a diabetic, so if this experiment succeeds, I will be eating banana breads that are better for me.

My sugar counts have been good, recently. Yesterday, I pricked my finger, dropped my blood on the strip, and got a reading of 95. Today, I did the same thing and my reading was 84. I am always happy when my sugar counts are low. It means that I might live longer.

I like living.

This day is good, full of potential for positive thinking, and positive things, but I can screw it up easily, cast darkness where there is light. I have done it before, for years, decades that seemed like centuries, actually.

You can look at a jar of crunchy peanut butter and say, “This is not the type of peanut butter that I like,” without trying it. Or you can try the peanut butter, and then say, “Why this peanut butter is not so bad, in fact it is good. I don’t know why I remember it from my childhood as being bad.”

The key is in trying. If you don’t try, nothing can happen: good, or bad; and if you try, often. good things do happen.

Call me Mr. Positive.

I had to laugh, this morning, as I headed back into the kitchen, after feeding the dogs in the living room. My oldest cat, Kobain, was standing at attention, near the spot where his bowl sits; the bowl that I put a tablespoon of wet cat food in for him, each morning. His cue to stand at attention must be when I feed the dogs. How precious. I went and got his bowl out of the dish washer, and filled it for him.

I’m feeding Kobain the cheap cat food, now. Times are tough. I don’t have a job. I live on food stamps, and a disability check. I haven’t turned out, yet, to be the great writer that everybody keeps telling me that I am.

Many people tell me that I am going to be famous. I would just like to pay my bills with the words that I create. I have had people come up to me in the grocery store, before, and say, “Aren’t you…?”

And I was, and the feeling of being approached by a stranger was an uncomfortable feeling. When I go to the grocery store, I just wanted to buy my eggs, and onions, and a few other things, and get out of there.

No one has asked for my autograph, yet, which is a relief. Can you see me buying bananas, and someone comes up wanting my autograph? I have just found the right bunch of bananas, the oldest, ripest bunch of bananas in the banana display, perfect, almost immediately, for to be mashed with a fork, and then added to a couple of eggs and some canola oil and beat about in a bowl.

I don’t want to give up my bananas; I’m sure that some other banana bread baker will come along and snatch them up right in front of me, while I sign my name on this woman’s oatmeal cereal box, so I ask the young lady to hold the banana bunch for me while I sign her cereal box. I see her grimace. I mean these bananas are ripe, fit to be used for baking within the hour.

My other cat, my black cat, Jaggar, doesn’t much care for the cheap cat food. He will look at it. He will sniff it, and then he will, mostly, walk away from it, leaving it, either, for Kobain to eat, or one of my dogs. It is usually Bundy who sneaks up on the leftover cat food. He knows not to, but he can’t help himself. The food urge overcomes the urge to be good, to listen to his master, to follow the rules as they have been established (by me) around here.

Bundy is half Labrador and half Rottweiler. I think that it is the Rottweiler half that gives Bundy the problems that he gives me.

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The last wife of the notoriously wild author Hunter S Thompson,
Anita, shared his world of drink and drugs
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article3602025.ece
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K Music of The Day (You will have run listening to it).

Click for Cyndi Craven music: http://cyndicravenmusic.com/music-main/

Click for Art Linton Music: http://www.reverbnation.com/artlinton

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K Poem of the Day

All That Matters

She’s the queen of in and out.
She’s the master of one night stands.

See her fall so gracefully onto the mattress,
with a wine glass in her hand.

In the morning, she’s not sure
if she’s been good or bad.

All that matters
is that the children don’t know.

Well, you didn’t want a virgin,
but she’s gone too far.

Will you laugh or cry
when she puts a bullet in her head?

–Mikel K
Namaste
Peace and Love
Peace and Love

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Writers with full-time jobs often have difficulty finding time to write.

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