Some great things happen in writing by accident. Road Joy was one of those things.

After no agents showed any interest in my first novel, I made the decision to focus on writing short stories. Short stories gave me the opportunity to experiment and sharpen my techniques before succumbing to the long, torturous process of writing another novel that might not succeed.

Time is the greatest asset. It is imperative to make the most of it. There was no point in writing another novel until I was sure that I had grown enough as a writer to justify the effort.

Writing short stories was the best way to make the most of my time improving and finding my true writing voice. But there is no right way to write. We can fool ourselves into thinking that there is one perfect way. Everyone takes their own unique path to get there. But this is the approach that worked for me. So, it began.

Finding my voice through writing short stories

One the many difficulties of writing is judging your own work. You’re biased because you’ve put so much into it, bursting your own brain cells over the tiniest things. Your mind is blind to the weaknesses and marvels at the strengths. You believe you’ve written something amazing, only to send it out into the world and receive nothing but silence. The silence is loud, humbling, and painful. It’s worse than sending a text message to that someone you like who never responds.

I decided that if magazines or eZines started accepting my short stories, it would be a good sign that my writing was improving. So, I started, and many rejections came. But then acceptances started to explode into my inbox.

It was time to write a new short story.

I have a notebook full of random one- or two-sentence ideas, scrawled down before they were forgotten. One of them kept screaming at me:

“Someone starts knocking people over in his car for fun.”

Dark. Disturbing. Violent.

Yes.

So, I started.

When a Short Story Grows Wheels

5,000 words to completion seemed a reasonable guess, but I never write to meet word counts. A story is finished when it has been told. Anything shorter is incomplete; anything more is full of pointless filler that weakens the story’s power.

But 5,000 words came and there was still a lot more to discover.

It needed more.

The characters needed more.

I had to find out what happened to Bruce, the eighteen-year-old trapped caring for an abusive, alcoholic father and having to witness the damage inflicted on his younger sister, Ciara. All of that anger, frustration, and disgust. It boiled inside him, building pressure, threatening to explode.

Something has to give.

One night, it does: Bruce steals his father’s Range Rover for a joyride.

The Accident: Where Everything Changed

Many young men chase adrenaline behind the wheel, racing along roads, not caring for the risk they’re taking with themselves and others. Bruce discovers that same rush. For a moment, he feels free.

Then he hits a pedestrian.

The fear hits him.

Like many people who cause accidents with no witnesses, he flees.

The fear soon flees him.

Bruce realises he’s not horrified.

It didn’t break him.

He enjoyed it.

That terrified me.  

This story was becoming the rawest piece I had ever written. I couldn’t stop.

Why I Chose to Tell It From the Killer’s Point of View

There’s many novels and movies about serial killers, but few of them explore the world through their eyes. Writing Road Joy in the first person made it more intimate, and therefore more brutal. Being inside Bruce’s head let me explore his impulses, rationalisations, and his contradictive nature of being both loving and violent.

It made it more real.

I felt that if I stayed inside his head, readers would feel that uncomfortable closeness to the dark nature inside him, the darkness that could appear in anybody who is pushed, pulled, and torn apart by the world around them.  

I didn’t set out to write a novelette.

I had no plan.

But sometimes, when you let your typing fingers go, they hammer out something more twisted than you ever expected. And that is what happened here.