UPDATES from a disaster zone

• ICE STORM

• CANCELLED PLANS & BEING CANCELLED

• SPAIN GOING-AHEAD PLANS

• PUZZLING

• WHAT I’M READING – WHO CAN TELL THE STORY?

• and a little prompt

All around my woodfire-warmed home limbs and trunks snap and crash. Silvered by a sheen of ice, it is a terrible beauty. Ancient maples and oak shiver in the freezing rain and let go under the weight. Creatures—the tiny chipmunks and sparrows to the iridescent ducks and elegant moose struggle through the debris in search of safety. There is none. Outside the windows, shimmering branches send down a rain of crystalline jewels as they fall. Trees and their many arms block the road in both directions.

This is the first time I’ve experienced disaster. So far, though, the roof has withstood the onslaught, as have the cars in the drive, covered as they are now in branches of all sizes. Power has been out for two days and the landline phone is dead. But, we have a wood stove for heat, candles and lanterns for light, a river for water to wash and flush toilets, propane for the Coleman stove, and food. We are fortunate and I am grateful beyond.

We’ll be fine.

Fine.

If I look on the bright side, once this is over, all we need is a chainsaw and we’ll have wood for years to come.

This situation puts all the concerns swirling in my life into perspective. It’s true, that having to cancel an event at the Coldwater library in Severn was disappointing. It had been planned for months, and I was looking forward to celebrating What the Living Do’s first birthday. But we’ll reschedule. Plus, I’m projecting much finer weather for my April date at the Ramara library.

Still, the mystery of my vanishing social accounts continues to poke at me. A few days ago, I took out a Facebook ad for the May writing retreat in Spain, and it was doing so well I took out a similar ad on Instagram. Facebook charged me $45 CAD but when it went through my PayPal account it converted it to USD and charged my account $75. CAD. It took a few phone calls, chats, and emails to surprisingly receive a full refund of the $75. Okay, I thought. But then, I received this message:

Dear Write Your Way In,

We would like to share some important information with you regarding a recent advertising campaign on our platform. After reviewing user feedback and conducting a thorough review, we have found that your current advertising content does not comply with the platform's transparency, intellectual property rights, and related terms.

Promoting products of unknown origin

• The current advertising content lacks clear information about the origin of the product, leading to confusion and distrust from consumers.

• Not providing transparent details about the origin not only makes customers doubt the quality and reliability of the product, but also violates the platform's transparency policy.

Using images and brands without permission

• We have found that some of the images and logos used in your advertisement do not have the permission of the owner.

• This action, whether intentional or unintentional, can create the illusion that your product is related to another well-known brand, potentially infringing on intellectual property rights and damaging your product's reputation.

Which of course is ridiculous, so I followed the steps to request a review, only to find that both my Facebook and Instagram accounts were gone. The message I received stated that an email I didn’t recognize (ie: not my email) had not followed the rules. No recourse. The FB support email box is full. Such an eerie feeling to not be able to access my own information. It makes me realize how dependent on social media I’ve been. I guess once I have power again, I’ll head over to Bluesky. I’ve created another Instagram account but all my “followers” are gone, of course, and my nearly 200 posts—videos, prompts, funny memes…

So I can’t email, text, or call anyone. I tell myself, remember when you lived for a year without electricity or phone, the first half of which you were car-less? Just the wood stove, the little red Valentine manual typewriter, kerosene lamps, and Lady, your gentle canine companion. You were fine, then. No social media, GPS, iPhone, or texting. You wrote long letters. And poems. And walked through the woods and down into the valley to visit friends. That was real social.

And then there’s the WORLD. The world outside. Outside the outside. Everyone is grappling with the fallout designed by the heartless. Which dwarfs my small troubles even in my own mind. Still, the trees keep crashing around my house.

Life is such a metaphor. I’m just sorry the trees have to pay for our greed and blindness.

I work on my manuscript, which fortunately is printed and hole-punched so it’s safely in a binder, but honestly, it’s a challenge to focus. So I move to the puzzle on the table by the window to the river. It’s a peaceful scene of colourful docked canoes, a shimmering lake, rich green trees, and a sky full of pink and white cloud. The mind goes very still when working on a puzzle. That piece, that colour, that shape. I’ve never appreciated jigsaw puzzles before, but I am decidedly a fan now.

Regarding the trip to Spain, we’re going. Some participants have had to back away—for various reasons, including accidents, deaths in the family, and justified fear. But new ones are signing on. So even if we are fewer in number, the show will go on. The beautiful journals designed by Brian Foot in Victoria have been meticulously printed by Impression House in Orillia, and travel plans are in place and paid for. I am so looking forward to warmth and sun, not to mention writing in person together every day for ten days. We’ll put our heads down and open our hearts to the stories we need to tell. The grief and the joy—all shades of the human experience are welcome, in any voice one chooses. There are currently three spots available. Check it out!

What I’ve been reading: Lies I told My Sister, by Louise Ells – a story with several resonant threads to What the Living Do—secrets, guilt, sisters, and reproductive issues; How to Be Eaten, a rather grisly modern retelling of various fairy tales; The Plot, a fresh send-up of a literary life about a stolen story, with shades of Yellowface; and About Time, a lovely memoir/autobiography by a fellow PJ writer, Mary Ella Magill…

Beta reading. It’s an essential step in preparing one’s manuscript for submission. It can’t be your mother or your partner, unless you have a specific understanding of what is required (not to mention a heap of trust). It has to be someone who understands the mechanics of story, of course, but above all, a Beta reader needs to be helpful. To highlight a manuscript’s strong points and to be able to articulate what might need work or clarification in a manner that doesn’t shut the writer down. It’s a delicate balance. And because it's a big ask, it’s a difficult thing to request. Luckily for a whole gang of PJ writers, both our wondrous holder-of-space, Sue Reynolds. and I came up with the same idea at once. And bless, her, she went right to work to implement it. Writers sent in a synopsis of their work, with genre, page count, and specifics about the sort of feedback they need, and these were offered to over a hundred fellow writers. What a tremendous gift! I wasn’t able to attend the session where this was discussed but I’m sure it provided much needed support to several writers. PJ Writers, with whom I share an hour most weekday mornings, are a generous and supportive bunch.

Day 2 without power

All through the day and evening we listened to splintering and cracking, smelled the freshly exposed spruce and pine, and watched the cascade of ice as it rained down with the falling branches. This morning I sat in my car to listen to the news. Barrie, Orillia, Peterborough, Belleville, and Kingston have all declared a state of emergency. And no doubt, further north isn’t faring any better.

It’s raining now and above zero. The ice has all melted but the trees are weeping. I stand in the dark morning and listen to them moan.

Later:

After sitting in my car to listen to the news, I realized that we could be days before power was restored, so at 5:30 I accepted my sister’s offer to come to Guelph. Driving from Sebright to Barrie was chilling, to say the least. So much devastation.

Tuesday.

I wake up to a pink sky and coffee I don’t have to hand grind or boil water on a Coleman burner. (Not a hardship, trust me—I was fortunate and grateful to be able to do that.)

In my dreams, I realized what must have happened to my social accounts. My sister was able to find some peculiar messages on my “deleted” Instagram account—posts that had been removed with strange comments such as, “Yummy!” “That looks great!” And others that I had never seen, then the alert that the account had been removed. So what I imagine is that someone or something hacked my account and posted inappropriate content with bot comments. I was going to start another Instagram, but I’ve lost all the connections there, so I decided to try to grow my Bluesky page instead. Fine me here: @susanewadds.bsky.social

And since you’ve waded through my words thus far, here is a gift for you in the forma of a writing (or musing) prompt:

Ask this question of your character or yourself: “What are you waiting for?” And answer it in as much sensory and concrete detail as you can.

Love to all!