Hi everyone:

I am brand new to this and am doing a half-marathon.  I have always loved writing, I wrote short stories when I was younger and kept detailed journals.  I abandoned writing after college, a combination of “real world” distractions and laziness.  But writing was always in the back of my mind.  About five years ago, a friend suggested/challenged me to start writing again, but this time to try poetry.  This was at a point in my life when I was temporarily unemployed and spending my days wandering around NYC.  I had never considered poetry before, always deeming it “not my thing” or too technical.  I started a notebook which I called ‘Maria’s Big Book of Bad Poetry” as a joke to keep my expectations low.  As it turns out, not only did I start to like poetry (and learned that my assumptions of “form” and “technicality” were just that–assumptions), I realized that poems gave me a freedom I didn’t feel with short stories.  But I struggle with finding time to write, and I am hoping the half-marathon will be the challenge I need to get started again.