Writing with Style. What’s your writing style? Do words just flow from your mind to your fingertips? Do you like handwriting first? Do you plan your posts? Title first or last? Where do you write best?

I write while I’m running. It’s been that way since I was a little girl and walked home from school. The bus dropped me at the bottom of our mile long dirt road and I took my time, kicking the dirt under my feet and plugging my nose and I wandered past the dairy cows. I told stories to myself of girls with names like Jessica or Samantha who wore their long blonde hair in braids down their backs. These girls had their very own horses and were the most popular girls in their schools. They were not lonely like me.

These stories kept me going day after day and sometimes, if it wasn’t cold and snowy, I’d linger on our front porch before I went inside because the story wasn’t ready to end. Knowing that the stories were waiting for me got me through my school days. It was the quiet of the Vermont woods that stoked those stories. The steady beat of my feet on the road and wind on my face-these noises were the orchestra to my imagination and it continues on today.

I run every morning in the still dark and quiet streets of my southern home. The plot lines have changed and I’m no longer telling stories of Jessica and horses, but the stories come just the same. Whether they are practical stories filled with interviews and tips from experts on living well with diabetes, or stories of smart and inspirational women with diabetes, or stories of my own, there are always stories to fill my head. Some mornings I go straight from my run to my computer where I sit and write, I’ve got to get it all down before it melts away. Other mornings there is nothing and I concentrate on the steady beat of my feet on the pavement and that’s okay because I’m no longer lonely.