Snap Happy (A Daniel Ricciardo story)

Snap Happy - an explanation

2021

So it's now been (I think) six and a half years since I started writing Snap Happy. Wattpad tells me it has gained nearly 90,000 total views (I mean what the hell???) and somehow new people are still reading. Hi and thank you over and over again.

I wasn't a teenager when I wrote Snap, I wasn't full of raging hormones or dreaming of when I might get my first kiss, I didn't have a bedroom wall full of celebrity posters. I was in my late twenties, well out of uni, and at that point in a 7ish year long distance relationship with a man who didn't love me any more. It would take me another year to realise that a relationship that didn't make you happy was worse than no relationship at all.

In the meantime I had Daniel.

I don't remember exactly how or why I decided I was going to read fan fiction, I DO remember that I found a couple of particularly good stories that kept me company for hours and hours of train and bus journeys (to the point that I actually missed my stop). I'm not sure either at what point I decided I was going to start writing something of my own, or when I knew it was going to be Daniel. Looking back now I can see that I needed to create the life and the relationship I didn't have, to take me away from the reality of being in a relationship that no longer felt like one.

For a work of fiction Snap Happy contains an awful lot of truth. My name is not Emily Taylor but Emily Taylor is me. I did a photography degree where I met my now ex boyfriend. I wanted to be a motorsport photographer but never made it happen, I had a dead end job that I got to tide me over after uni and never managed to leave (until this year!!!) I lived with my parents. I'm a tall, plain, awkward English girl with no confidence. I like to paint things, I owned every outfit I described (except the awards and the wedding dress) and I can't drive.

Sometimes I think I owe Daniel an apology - he's probably be mortified if he ever read this! However I think more than anything I want to thank him. Ok he's an extremely attractive man I'm not going to deny it, but the year I needed it most he made me smile. I suppose I looked at Daniel and imagined that he would be fun, and he would be warm, and he would be kind. Dan has a very obvious public personality, he may be very different behind the scenes for all I know but somehow I doubt it. He is someone I didn't find too hard to picture what he might be like to be around - he's good character material BECAUSE he's not afraid to show a bit of character. And imagining being around him was NICE. Why wouldn't you want to escape to a world with this bright, bubbly, loveable goofball in it instead of someone who suddenly seemed to act like your whole existence was an inconvenience?

So he was my escape from a very dark lonely little world at the time. Sometimes I still read Snap Happy from start to finish even though I don't need it in the same way anymore - I have my own loveable goofball - but occasionally when he's not around I read it to myself for a few extra fuzzy feelings, and to remind myself that I wrote a thing once, and that years later people are still reading it *waves again.

So will I ever finish Collision Course? I'm sure at least once a year someone still asks me this. And I still don't know the answer. My favourite chapters of that story are still written but not posted because I don't quite remember the person I need to be in order to connect the story again. Possibly because there was a tiny bit less me in Collision Course and a little bit more of the fiction I will be able to make it up one day, but I think the biggest problem is that I don't need it any more in the same way that I needed Snap Happy. I use 'problem' only from a writing perspective - life is so much better than it was that I don't need to dream of a loving relationship to keep me warm anymore - I have one.

I don't think I could ever take Snap Happy down however, just in case anyone else ever needs a cuddly Australian racer (with a six pack!) to keep them warm when they are feeling sad. Also because in a strange little way I am proud of it, and possibly always will be.

Thank you to anyone who has ever read this, and to anyone whose stories gave a sad person a happy place to go.