I don't entirely regret my last post - but it was a bit irritable and bad-tempered. After all, if people really want to encumber their work with otiose and tiresome explanation, who am I to say them nay? But I still loathe it. And it does seem to be the weakest work which gets the most verbiage tacked onto it. However! Moving on ..... some people respond to illness by producing a lot more work, presumably on the grounds that they might have only a limited time ahead of them. Unfortunately, the reverse seems to have happened to me - I've never been exactly prolific, and while I did produce a quartet of watercolours when I came out of hospital, I now seem to have stopped - I have been asked to produce a series of drawings, but on spec: ie, I'll get paid when he who has commissioned them gets paid; and I can't help feeling well... what you really mean is you can't afford to pay me upfront and you're hoping I'll help you make the money from which you can then pay me my share..... It's not EXACTLY inspiring, is it? Pay me upfront, and I'll paint your grandmother doing a cartwheel, if that's the sort of thing that gets you going; but invite me to produce drawings in the hope they they'll create business .... well, I do understand where you're coming from; I'd quite like to help; but.... well...... I've not been well; I'm getting on a bit.....I can't, to tell the entire truth, really be bothered.... and frankly, I don't see a lot of profit in the enterprise for either of us........ So what does one do? If I were young and enthusiastic (oh dear.... that's a no, on both fronts...) I'd probably have a go. But now...? Well, what would you do? Probably, I'd do the drawings if the subject interested me; but it doesn't. On the other hand, I'm not doing much else - I'm not a professional illustrator, just someone who does a bit of illustration every now and then if asked nicely by someone clutching a handful of cash..... would you, in these circumstances, do it anyway? Or await payment and then do your best? And how do you inspire yourself, after a fallow period, to produce work at all? Answers on a postcard please to the usual address.