Using autofill./

[Shashank Khanvilkar <shashank@mia.ece.uic.edu>]

Hi,
Will appreciate some help here.

I am trying to make an ascii resume. I had set the line width to 75 
characters. However now i find another site which requires the line 
width to be just 62 characters.

To do this I am using the emacs autofill mode and have set the 
fill-column variable to 62 by placing the following lines in ~/.emacs.

(setq text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(setq fill-column '62)

However suppose I have a paragraph like the below:
Background
----------
* This is a test message. This is a test message. This is a test 
message.This  is a test message. This is a test message. This is a test
message. This is a test message. This is a test message.
* This is a second test message.  This is a second test message.
This is a second test message.  This is a second test message.
This is a second test message.

How do i ask emacs to apply the new line width.
I tried using <Meta-q> but it makes the above lines as:


Background ---------- * This is a test message. This is a test
message. This is a test message.  This is a test message. This
is a test message. This is a test message. This is a test
message. This is a test message.  * This is a second test
message.  This is a second test message.  This is a second
test message.  This is a second test message.  This is a
second test message.


Am i doing something wrong here.
Thanks
Shashank