"Before and After"

I started work on the last two days of a story I call "Before and After," an Evangelion story about the growth of Rei, her relationships with Gendo and Shinji, and her realization of her purpose as a tool for Instrumentality. It's a short piece--I anticipate around 30-50k words total, in about 10 chapters that are, roughly speaking, comparable in size to acts in Identity, which are each around 3-4k typically but can range up to 7-8k. The first chapter of this story is done, but I anticipate this only to be a side project, that I will work on at my leisure and not all the way through. And that...is okay.

Identity is still coming along; I'm about halfway through act 5 in "Journey to Jusenkyo," but writing "Before and After" does give me perspective. It's a lot easier to get words going when you don't have to make them synch up with a lot of established history and baggage (or, by extension, stuff you have planned). I think, in large part, this is what's slowed down work on Identity---what I might call logistics---and I'm hoping that working on another project will overall make me a little fresher with my writing.