Yesterday I got an e-mail from the Production Editor of Taxon with my contribution to the forthcoming book on the plant family Compositae (Asteraceae). It was a terrible reading! I was invited to give a talk on its nearest relatives on the 2006 years Compositae Conference in Barcelona, and this was thought to form the basis for a book chapter that was supposed to be submitted shortly after the conference. Unfortunately other things came in between and I never started writing on the chapter, and as time passed I thought (with some relief!) that it was too late for my contribution – when one day Vicki Funk sent me an e-mail telling me that I still had some time for finishing my contribution! With much too little time and many other obligations, I made a not very inspired attempt to write, something that shine through in the text I noticed today. I had a terrific chance to write an initiated and inspiring text about a fascinating part of the Angiosperm Tree of Life, with many interesting and curious members, but instead I only produced a worse-than-average, boring and quite uninteresting contribution… I clearly must write more and more often, to improve my scientific writing. Perhaps starting here at my web-page?