Losing a First Love

While I wait on John to get back to me on the revisions forDRAGORO, I've jumped back into writing my WIP, a YA paranormal thriller called LISTEN. I had stopped at 10,000 words when I got the offer of rep and spent my writing time on the revisions. I took a little hiatus before picking up the WIP, revising the first part and adding some more so I'm about halfway through the first draft. In the past when I was between projects I would spend my time with my first creative love--drawing & rendering.

I was drawing since I was in diapers. That, and making sculptors out of aluminum foil and colored tape. Those were my first two creative loves. I stopped sculpting as my writing took prominence 10 years ago, but drawing has been with me forever. I had first started out in pencil and by my teenage years moved on to pencil with ink and then finally paint markers that were popular with illustrators and production designers of the day. The coloring part of it is called rendering for those that don't know.

Always a big comic book fan, I became infatuated with the then new way comic books were colored--through digitial painting. The program of choice was and still is Photoshop. So about 7 years ago I bought the program along with a Wacom Tablet which uses a stylus that acts just like a pencil or pen. I instantly fell in love and all my renderings have been done on the computer. I'd start with a pencil drawing and scan it, or do a digital drawing in Photoshop and then get to painting. I had spent hours upon hours doing it.

Unfortunately, that seems to have taken it's toll. Back in May when I started working on the Dragon piece for DRAGORO, I began to feel a sharp pain in the third finger of my right hand while working with the stylus. I thought it was just fatigue or the way I was holding the stylus. The problem was that with the pain I no longer had the control of the stylus as I needed. I still feel that discomfort today, but while writing and I've noticed that my penmanship has suffered.

I haven't drawn or rendered anything of substance since June. I'm worried that the pain will return. But I can deal with the pain. The problem is the resultant lose of control of the stylus or pencil, the tools I use to put my visions to canvas, digital or otherwise.

I will try again, perhaps after I finish the first draft of my WIP. But I can see the writing on the wall. I'm slowly losing my first love.