Delicate situation with a friend.

[suewithers.livejournal.com]

Hi, this is not exactly a beware, I'm looking for advice to try and gracefully deal with a friend of mine. For her birthday a month or so ago I said I'd draw her a picture, now I wasn't planning on color or anything, more of a sketch with her favourite fandom couple. The thing is since then I've been approached to be in and art show, an art book and collab on one of the quarterly indie comics in my area.

Now I'd be ok telling another friend that I simply don't have time to do this soon, and to stop asking about when it will be done and details ext. But the thing is this friend has huge rejection issues and we're semi booked (once the script is finished on her end) to do a comic.

What the hell do I do? I mean I've understood her not being able to finish the script for almost 4 months, I can deal with that, she works and does school, but then to get pushy about something I have to put on the back burner every time we talk is not only aggravating but in my mind really hypocritical, especially when I'm illustrating her comic script for FREE and then just taking a cut if it gets published.

Any advice on dealing with this kind of situation? Should I just say that her pushiness is really not helping me want to collab and just deal with the damages to our friendship.