Thank
you for inviting me onto you blog!
I
became interested in psychology as a teacher when pupils brought
additional challenges to the classroom such as attachment disorder
and depression. I enrolled on an online course at Masters level in
psychology a few years ago and have enjoyed learning a great deal. I
use the knowledge I’ve gained in my fiction and poetry, in
Distorted Days
and forthcoming titles.
The
psychology behind the title Distorted
Days comes from the way
one’s perception of life is altered by depression. The ability to
reason and think rationally can be impaired and one’s view tends to
be negative. In the novel use prose poetry to capture Doris’ sad
mood. Doris believes her Mother doesn’t love her and the portrait
of her depicts her as weak. By the end of the story she realises
neither are actually correct.
Extract
The check-up always starts with
the same open question. ‘How have you been feeling, Doris?’
It’s like the endless
splattering of waves up the stroke side and bow side of an idle
rowing boat. Slap. Slap. Slap. The murky water slaps at the bow as if
it were a face. A tireless slapping, one after the other. Like an
assault with no retaliation. The wind is passive and there are no
oars, no cox, so I am marooned, stranded with myself, unable to
escape myself and the slap, slap, slap.
And the wet slapping sound
haunts my waking moments and my dreams. It spreads like damp, from
the floorboards up through the walls of my skin, till it discolours
my outlook: everything I see, everything I do, everything I hear.
Everything even smells a bit damp, a bit off, musty. Rotting. Even
memories discolour. Once the damp is in my brain, each thought is
imperfect, a little injured, frayed in some way.
A two-headed monster doesn’t
pop out because it’s already inside me. If only something tangible
would appear to ratify my illness! Even when the water’s calm, I
sense turmoil is coming. And so it does. There are no answers, just
questions; no ropes for rationality, only knots of confused,
distressing thoughts.
My brain now sounds like a
three year old’s because it asks the same questions over and over
and over again. The loop must take parents close to insanity. It ends
with sleep, the dead kind, not leaving a refreshed breezy feeling,
more like being roused from the dead. Then the loop starts again.
Every sound, scent, touch, is
blunt. Boiled. Life’s a black-and-white film on mute. It seems like
I have no taste buds, I leave no fingerprints, I have no edge. I’ve
become an abstract painting of fading shades of black, grey, stone.
Dr Timpson gives Doris advice and
support which helps her to rebuild her life. His advice is dispersed
throughout the novel and I am pleased that some readers have
commented in reviews that it has helped them when they were feeling
low.
I’ve
certainly had periods in my life where I thought about myself or a
situation in a negative or being overly self-critical which is really
unhelpful. It’s a cycle that can be difficult to break out of
without support. The front cover tries to depict the distorted way
Doris sees life early on in the story.
I
really hope you and your followers will enjoy my debut novel and
check in at my website – and if you’d like to listen to me read
from the story and some of my poems please visit Soundcloud.
Louise
XXX
Distorted Days by Louise Worthington
So what happens
when your husband runs off with your best friend? When you discover
the dead body of an old man halfway through your delivery round? When
your house is burgled and you get beaten up? Doris, Andy and Colleen
are about to find out. They’re also about to discover that you can
find friendship and support in the oddest of places…
Heart-rending,
humorous and above all authentic, Distorted Days is an
exquisitely written account of the ways in which life can knock you
off our feet – and how you can pick yourself up again. If you’ve
experienced the fickleness of fortune, this is a book that you’ll
never forget.
Before
writing full time, Louise worked mainly as an English teacher after
getting a degree in Literature and later, studying business and
psychology at Masters level.
Louise
grew up in Cheshire and now resides in Shropshire.
“Louise’s
characters, without exception, are skilfully wrought which make the
reader genuinely care for them.”
