Sylvanus Now Contest: Ten Thousand Hours

Here is the first entry for the Sylvanus Now Contest. It's by Gail Lethbridge, a wonderful writer and columnist with the Chronicle Herald. She can be found hanging out here.

Thank you, Gail! Your name is in the draw.
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Ten Thousand Hours
by
Gail Lethbridge

Cognitive neuroscientists estimate that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery over an artistic endeavor like music or writing.

Let's do the math on this. Ten thousand hours is 416 days if you work 24/7. That is just over a year and one month of nothing but writing. No time for sleep, breaks or eating, just writing.

Clearly this is not possibe, so let's break it down further. Say you worked eight hours per day with no break or lunch. This would mean that 10,000 would take you 1,250 days to complete. That is almost three and a half years with no weekends, holidays or days off. (Aren't online caculators great.)

Perhaps this would be possible for the aspiring writer who is single minded and brutally dedicated.

But what about the aspiring writer with a job, a young family, a partner, friends and extra curricular activities? Short of breaking the space-time continuum, how does this writer carve those 8 hours out of the busy life?

Even four hours or two hours per day would be a stretch the writer who juggles a life. And with each compromise, the 10,000 hours will take that much longer, seven years, 14 years, 20 years.
If the mathematics of this seems mind boggling, then think about the ergonomics of those 10,000 hours. How would your back, neck and shoulders feel after that much time hunched over a computer? What about the stinging eyes? The numb fingers?

And if that's not enough, think of the economics. Divide the annual wage of a writer into 10,000 hours and work out the hourly rate. On second thought, don't do that.

But even if you could manage the math, the ergonomics and the economics of the 10,000 hours, what about the problem - the central paradox - of balancing life with writing?

Is it not the family, the job, the partner, the friends and the extra curricular activities that provide the material for the writing? If a writer sacrifices any or all of these these non-writerly activities in order to lock herself away in a small room and write, is she not sacrificing the very heart and soul of her writing?

What would she write about? Writing? That's depressing and even moreso given the purpose of this contest.

Of course, this paradox is not complete. If it were, there would be no writing, or at least no writing worth reading.

It's self-defeating to think of those 10,000 hours. And it's self-defeating to think of the math and the ergonomics and the economics. But they are truths; the hard, miserable truths of writing.

And still, we write. I wonder why?