You got that right! That's resistance speaking -- if you haven't already, check out The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It's a wonderful book and he addresses that very topic. It's a yearly read for me. As for your pear, I love it! To get the most out of the assignment, I think it would be beneficial to try to get harder edges on your value shapes. In your drawing here, you have smooth transitions and soft edges, which makes for a great rendered drawing but is less useful for critique, since they are more diffused. It also makes it more difficult to count the total values. If you were to try this technique again, it may be helpful to do a few value scales, shown below, to warm up and then use them to select your value range. Keep your edges hard and try to use all 5 values. Really focus on designing clear shapes for each value. Good luck :)