In Episode 266, Christine Tulley walks through the process of creating a "book completion battle plan" when facing a tight deadline, sharing her real-time approach to finishing a book manuscript due March 1st with only 23 days remaining. She demonstrates how to audit your available time by identifying writing days versus non-writing days, distinguishing between "big block days" (2+ hours), smaller writing blocks (45-90 minutes), and brief time fragments, explaining that she has 15 realistic writing days to complete 15,000-25,000 words at approximately 1,600 words per day. Tulley emphasizes thinking in terms of sections and subsections rather than just word counts, strategically allocating big blocks for generating new content and structural work while reserving smaller time pockets for cleanup tasks, and she shares practical decisions like printing the full manuscript for review, hiring a coach for formatting help, planning when to hand off work for editing, and protecting key writing days. She explains that noting that this kind of strategic time mapping helps writers facing deadlines make informed decisions about whether they need to add weekend days or pull all-nighters to meet their goals.
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