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Whitby Free Press, Wednesday, December 11, 1996, Page 7 I y Seven thirty. Writing a coluxnn takes about ninety minutes, revising another thirty. Plenty of time. <'Well,» the writer says,. «what are we going to write about this week? Education?" «You did it lest week. And the week before. And the week before that.» "Oh. Yeah.» The writer now turns te the computer, opens a new file, pulls down the macr with the byline, huins, drumns fingers on the keyboard. Nothing. Hle switches prograins, plays two hands of Yukon, one gaine of cribbage, ponders a move in e-mail chess. Turning back te the column file, still finds it blank. Now, he checks back files. Last year et this time, let's seei, Ebenleezer Harris, Christmas Concerts. Nope. By nine thirty the column file is still blank. «Dad," says the youngest member of the houséhold. "Can I have a story tonight?» Erin turned eleven in July. Her birth was chronicled in columin number ten. She has been read a story every night since. She has fallen asleep under this very chair, while her Daddy typed, and typed, and cursed. 'She has an enrichéd vocabulary. Tonight's stoiy is The Ghost of Christmas Present, from A Chiristmas Carol. Stery over, he returns te the column file. StiIl blank. Ten fifteen. "Tonight," he says, «Bill Swan has nothing te say.n The writer, now dry as a sick office building, sits down before the television news. At ten thirty, the kettle whistles. He takes his nightly chaniomile inte the den. He asks the computer te check the e-mail for the third time that day, plays one more gaine of Yukon. He checks the cunfie, just in case. Now, where it had once been entirely blank, a wispy paragraph offers a tentative beginning. Eleven o'clock. He fleshes out the paragraph, adds another, and another, his fingers flying, the tee growing cold i the cup on his mouse pad. He flings words about like match sticks, splitting themn with axe blows of punctuetion. Take that, you infinitive! Stand up straight, you pluperfect past participle! The writer finelly leans back, sighs, sips in a gulp of the pot of cold tee, and then pulls down the menu bar for writing tools, does a word count. One thousand and eighty! No way! He resets the kettle, refreshes his tee pot, says good night te, the rest of the house, and returns te the computer. It is now quarter past midnight. He slashes, deletes, that flrst prime paragraph, trims its following brother, purges the fourth and sixth, wonderful, witty descriptions that even now bring chuckles te, his cheeks. But they do not advance the piece. Out they go. Thus he slioes, whacking the final version down te 639 words. Close enough. One final spell check, wring the whole thing through the Grammar check and he is done. H1e saves an extra version of the product in WordPerfect 5.0., switches te Bit Coin and sends the electronic signaIs te, the computer at The Free Press office. Just ini case, he -shifts his computer te fax mode and faxes a back-up copy; finally,' prints a hard copy for family critics in the morning. .1He tries one more game of Yukon. Wins. Turns the machine off. It is twelve flfty-two. Good night. RFSJENCE 0F JOHN DU1NDA HOWD]EN, C.1925 This housep the old Betts homestead, waa rebuilt in 1888 by Arehitect Albert A. post for John D. Howden, Whitby's postmaster from 1885 to 1924. The house, on Dundas Street East, was deinolished in 1964 and replaced by the Qeorgian Courts apartmnents. WhItby Azciv.u photo 10 YEARS AGO from the Wednesday, Deoember 10, 1986 edition of the WfflTBY FREE PRESS * Four homes under construction on Bassett Blvd. were destroyed by lire at a loss of $350,000. * Firefighters Don Ferguson and Don Murdock reoeived bravery awards for rescuing two children from a house fire on Mar. 24. * Whitby resident Dr. Richard Ketchell reoeived a life rnembership in the Ontario Veterinary Association. * Town Council will provide Fred Martin, Whitby's Town Crier, with a uniform and bell. 35 YEARS AGO from the Thursday, Deoember 7, 1961 edition of the WBITY WEEgLY NEWS *An officiai plan has been adopted by the town council for Whi*tby. *About 30 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the municipal election on Dec. 4. * Town Council is concerned about the safety in winter of the old Brock and Henry Street railway bridges. * Seven figure phone numbers will replace the old Mohawk 8 exchange for Whitby next year. 100 YEARS AGO from the Friday, Deoember 11, 1896 edition of the WfflTY ORRONICLE " John Stanton, who selected the type for printing The Chronicle when it was founded 40 years ago, 's stili foreman of the print shop after 2,100 issues. " The Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance of Ontario held their 48th annual meeting at the Whitby Town Hall last week. *Steve Coffey was shot in the hand when a .22 calibre rifle with which he was playing, discharged. *The yars and stables of the Woodruff House hotel at Brock and Dundas streets are being expanded. Number 576 -- with difficui Welcome, fiiends, to the Swan household of a Monday night. Dinner has been served and eaten; dishes cleared, pots scrubbed. Six hundred words now face us square in the face. Six hundred words. Every Monday evening, for the past eleven and one-haif years. That's 575 columns; 345,000 words. Almost five 75,000-word novels. Six hundred words. Every Monday. Writing, of course, is an easy task. You just jot down what coceurs to you, said ( I think) Mark Twain. Now the occurring: there's the difficulty. Just sit down at the keyboard, open a vein, and bleed. Or says another writer: sit down at the keyboard until little drops of blood form on your forehead. I