{"id":1540,"date":"2007-06-06T15:57:11","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T15:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html"},"modified":"2007-06-06T15:57:11","modified_gmt":"2007-06-06T15:57:11","slug":"magic-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html","title":{"rendered":"Magic 16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Make it 16. Pending editing.<\/p>\n<p>Whew.<\/p>\n<p>Someone once said that no one ever actually finishes writing a novel &#8211; you just give up. This wasn&#8217;t a novel, but the subject is potentially so vast, and I was charged with writing something short and sort of on the inspirational side of things, the same feeling applies. It&#8217;s one of those things where you get in the flow, you think it&#8217;s going well, but near the end you realize that you have absolutely no perspective, because you&#8217;re so close to it, and you&#8217;re faced with two choices:<\/p>\n<p>1) Panic and think you need to massively redo everything. Maybe. Possibly.<\/p>\n<p>2) Trust your instincts and be open to editing.<\/p>\n<p>#2 is better. And less work. So I naturally tend to lean that way.<\/p>\n<p>But yay. I spent the last hour organizing my notes and cleaning up the piles of books that accumulate during this process &#8211; in my study, in the living room and on the back porch. It feels so great. The best part (and this is strange) is that I can hardly wait to <strong>read something<\/strong> that has <span style=\"font-size: 1.2em\">nothing <\/span>to do with what I just wrote about..and to do so without feeling guilty! I am ridiculously excited about that.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;the next few days will be occupied with a visit from the oldest (we finally just settled on IND &#8211; two hundred dollars less), getting Katie to do her end-of-the-year room shoveling, which will be difficult considering her busy social calendar, and sending up prayers for the safe travel of my dad and Hilary who are headed to Istanbul on Friday or Saturday, I think, where they will be for three days before heading out on an academically-oriented ancient history cruise of the Greek Isles &#8211; a well-deserved adventure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Make it 16. Pending editing. Whew. Someone once said that no one ever actually finishes writing a novel &#8211; you just give up. This wasn&#8217;t a novel, but the subject is potentially so vast, and I was charged with writing something short and sort of on the inspirational side of things, the same feeling applies.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Magic 16 - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Magic 16 - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Make it 16. Pending editing. Whew. Someone once said that no one ever actually finishes writing a novel &#8211; you just give up. This wasn&#8217;t a novel, but the subject is potentially so vast, and I was charged with writing something short and sort of on the inspirational side of things, the same feeling applies.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-06-06T15:57:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Magic 16 - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Magic 16 - Via Media","og_description":"Make it 16. Pending editing. Whew. Someone once said that no one ever actually finishes writing a novel &#8211; you just give up. This wasn&#8217;t a novel, but the subject is potentially so vast, and I was charged with writing something short and sort of on the inspirational side of things, the same feeling applies.&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-06-06T15:57:11+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html","name":"Magic 16 - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-06-06T15:57:11+00:00","dateModified":"2007-06-06T15:57:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/magic-16.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Magic 16"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}