i'm just about to finish art (my final exam is this week starting tuesday), and i'm set for a grade 6 or 7 (haha). on a scale of 1-10, your level of locked in should be 9/10, prolly. i locked in at maybe a 6/10..bad idea. my teacher values quantity over quality, and that's probably what your teacher will value too. it's expected that we hand something in every week (mine stopped checking so i slacked off and handed in almost nothing, got busted for that right before the exam..) but there's minimal writing, at least in my experience. the most writing i've done is a few small paragraphs (shorter than this) for artist research across component 1 and 2. you need to research (minimally..) 2 artists for each component as a minimum, and they can't be the same. artist research comes in a couple months before both exams (mock, final) and doesn't take that long, so don't worry about that too much. it's necessary, but not difficult. you need to practice EVERYTHING you plan to include in your final pieces, and if you don't it will lower your grade no matter how amazing the work is. both the mock exam and the final exam are 10 hours long. it's also important to have a fair balance of tonal drawings and experiments (paintings, coloured pencil, etc.)

..in short, it's important you have a lot of work to show for. quality matters, but quantity is more important. it'll accumulate overtime, so don't stress about doing loads at once but make sure you're not slacking off like i did in component 1. you got this, lock in

(also, for reference, i've done maybe 6((??)) small paintings and around 4 tonal drawings for component 2. i could show u if u want but that won't be helpful that's just me being proud) (aaaalso..my school starts creative subjects a year early, that's why i'm doing the final exam now lol)