Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

I held back from painting, like a diver on the water’s edge; once in I found myself buoyed and exhilarated. I was normally a slow and deliberate painter; that afternoon and all next day, and the day after, I worked fast. I could do nothing wrong. At the end of each passage I paused, tense, afraid to start the next, fearing, like a gambler, that luck must turn and the pile be lost. Bit by bit, minute by minute, the thing came into being. There were no difficulties; the intricate multiplicity of light and color became a whole; the right color was where I wanted it on the palette; each brush stroke, as soon as it was complete, seemed to have been there always.

Just like writing, getting into the zone