With the time for faffing drafting and redrafting over, I had to find a way not to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of drawing ahead of me. I used a very simple formula: divide the number of pages that need drawing by the number of days I have to draw (allowing myself the occasional weekend, and a week’s holiday halfway through). The number I came up with was 12 pages a week. So long as I could stick to that target, I could stop worrying about the whole massive thing and worry only about 12 pages at a time.

This wasn’t quite enough to settle my nerves, so I made a wall chart breaking down exactly when I would tackle each section. Seeing it all laid out in front of me, with clearly enough space to hit the deadline, felt very comforting.

It’s perhaps important to acknowledge that this extreme level of meticulous planning is not dissimilar to the way I used to plan my meals when I was anorexic…