I’ve certainly taken my time to start writing this introduction – eleven and a half hours before the marathon starts, when I’m about to go to sleep. And that says two things about me: one, I often leave things for the last minute, and two, I’m a nocturnal creature that does her best work at night.

Raven is not my given name, but it’s the one I chose to use as a writer. My path towards becoming one was not straight, but hey, it got me to the destination! To quote Douglas Adams, “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

I wrote a lot when I was little, and then even more when I was a teenager, but eventually my desire to right the world’s wrongs led me into journalism. I became a music journalist, trying to break the mainstream patterns of it, trying to inform people that there’s more than they hear on the radio. I failed miserably, had a severe identity crisis and quit my journalism studies in the final year. I got accepted into a creative writing programme in a university in UK, and while I was tidying up my room before leaving, I found my old notebooks and realized that I stopped writing while I was trying to be a journalist. Never again.

Just about a month ago I finished my studies. Though poetry is not my number one thing, I do enjoy it a lot. I have a few ideas for poems that I haven’t yet gotten around to, and I hope this will be a chance to force myself to do that. Also, I must say a part of me will miss the pre-deadline all-nighters, so this marathon will be just what I need.

I’m glad it starts only at 2pm in UK, my brain is not on before 12-1pm, and I do my best after 11pm. If I didn’t get to sleep till 12, this would be much harder! And, speaking of sleep, I should go… I hope inspiration is watching over us all tomorrow. Good night, and good luck.