I love painting. I hate drawing.
In addition to writing, making art is a calling of mine. This means I can’t stop doing it, even though I go through phases of thinking I’m horrible at it.
I took most of the art classes offered at my high school, I went to art college for a year. I took all of those art classes because I loved the freedom of creativity. I was never one of the “talented” students. In fact, when I started studying fine art drawing, I was particularly bad. My work has improved drastically over the years, thanks to practice and a couple of great teachers.
I realized that even though I don’t enjoy drawing, I can do it well if I apply myself, and there’s few better feelings than looking at something I’ve drawn and thinking, hey, that’s pretty good!
I think drawing will always be a chore for me, but my best paintings all started out as a series of sketches.
Relating this all back to writing, I hate the first paragraph of the day. The words never start flowing right away. I’m still in my head, which is telling me that my writing sucks. But if I can just get past that first few sentences, I can get into a state of flow. My story starts telling itself and my critical inner voice shuts up.
The best pleasures in life are often veiled behind some hardship. Get to the good part.
K. J. Cole 