Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[bclark76 <bclark76@gmail.com>]

I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
smoothly type prose?

I want paragraphs to look like this:

*TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.

*TAB*The preceeding tab actually gets converted to spaces which
*TAB*I do not want.  I also don't want this line to be indented at
all!
*TAB*If I want emacs to format this paragraph the way I want, I have
*TAB*to manually delete the tab ( which has actually been converted
*TAB*to spaces ) on the second line before continuing to type.

*TAB*I want to be able to end my paragraph by pressing RET twice
followed by a TAB and have the paragraph automatically auto filled to
appear as this one.

Thanks, and sorry for the NOOB question.