An example: Many years ago, I started a poetry journal called 32 Poems Magazine. Here’s why I thought I could start a magazine:

• I knew excellent poets who could provide poems.
• I understood print buying and production.
• My background in direct mail fundraising would help with subscriptions and fundraising.
• My web experience meant I could build a website in WordPress.
• My graduate degree meant I could edit.
• I had the fabulous John Poch to help.

Was I an expert? Nope. Did I have any experience with running a magazine? Nope.

Here’s all that I did not know:

• How to start a nonprofit (took 18 pages of paperwork and hours on the phone with the IRS).
• How to form a board.
• How to code PHP for WordPress.
• Many other tasks too numerous to mention.

Despite all of the above, I just did it. I started it with a small pink flyer we handed out at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Baltimore, MD. Stan Plumly may have been one of the first to receive a pink flyer. He kindly did not tell me I was insane. If he had, however, he would not have stopped me.

Then, we got the first subscriber. I thought I’d throw up, but I kept pressing forward anyway.

Bottom Line: Don’t wait to be asked to:

• Start a magazine.
• Manage a literary website.
• Edit literary work.
• Publish a book.
• Create a Jewish poetry anthology (for instance).

Create and then do.

Connecticut Avenue

The buildings are not tall but tall enough 
to block the sun and so today can end
How it began—in a milky shadow.
The 42 has passed through Farragut.
past the hotel famous for its Madam. 
That cupcake shop? It’s all the rage until 
the next. Dupont embassies surround 
the simple lust of strangers, coiffed and cocktailed.
That man there. Do I know him?
Too late. We’re past. It’s all the past.