Overview #53: Resolutions

At first I thought this would be easy, but then I realized it might border on painfully repetitive. After all, New Year's resolutions are made at new year, which meant all my stories would be set at the same time, and that seemed kinda lame. I tried switching up universes to give things a little variety, and I think combining Riley's birthday wish with Asia's new year's resolution was a nice touch. Possibly the best thing that came out of this week is that I finally came up with a decent end to the Carolyn-verse. That made me very, very happy. The juxtaposition of Bob's new year's resolutions when he's fresh off the end of his relationship with Carolyn to Carolyn's resolutions after she's married Bob were pretty powerful (or so I like to think), and even though this is a fractured universe, it's one that, in its fractured state, is done. I suspect that sometime down the road I'll come through and finish it off properly, like the fractured universe I started in high school. Maybe that's what I'm doomed to do - write fractured universes left and right and let them simmer before I come back to them years later.

This is precisely the sort of writing revelation that M&M is meant to inspire.

A few finishing notes on the Carolyn-verse: in my head, the story ends like this - Bob and Carolyn get married. Carolyn continues working as a lawyer, but she retires from heavy business litigation and becomes an estate planner. Bob goes back to school and gets his teaching degree and ends up teaching English at some nice school in the south, probably Tennessee because that's where Clay is working and recording still (after an unsuccessful gander at Hollywood). Dan and Joey stay up in Calgary and Dan eventually works his way up to detective. Scott gets engaged to a girl but then breaks it off when she cheats on him, and he still works as an EMT, though he continues to write music with his brothers and on his own. Thanksgiving is always at Shelley and Dinah's, and Kevin is usually invited. The boys spend Christmases with their own families, but once in a blue moon John crashes Carolyn and Bob's Christmas. Scott ends up marrying Carolyn's law school friend Melanie.

I guess, for once, this one ends happily ever after.

Sometimes John still has to shoot people to keep Bob alive.