Writer’s Block: Judith Pond

All Lit Up: Tell us about your newest book. What can readers expect? 

JUDITH POND: My newest book is still being written. Readers can expect seals, a mountain, a valley, an ocean for the seals to go in, and literary murder. As for my last book, That’s Where You Were, Then was published in 2025 by Freehand Books. It’s what I would call a Bildungsroman, basically one character’s “life-arc” from childhood through to maturity, from predicaments to epiphanies. Richard Ford says somewhere that good choices don’t make for great stories; I agree.

ALU: What inspired the idea for your latest book?

JUDITH: I was in Nova Scotia a couple summers ago, and while there, I made a macabre discovery. I asked my mother about it, and she told me something I knew I was going to have to write about. I gave it a year while I finished a different book. When I looked back in, it was still there. That was the sign I should start.

ALU: What was the most surprising thing you discovered about your story and/or your characters while writing your latest book? And if you could spend a day with one of your characters, who would it be and why?

JUDITH: I discovered (with the book being written) that the characters bug me when I’m not at work. And that I feel good when I walk past my office. I love spending time with what I call “my people.” If I could spend a day with one of them, I think it might be Audrey Jinks. She is believed to be a witch (the book is set in an earlier time, though not very much earlier), but what she actually is, is disobedient. She refuses to play the roles she expected to play. Naturally, she is therefore thought to be a witch.

ALU: Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer?

JUDITH: Actually a sit-down moment. I grew up in Nova Scotia. When I was about fifteen, I went up into the woods behind my family’s house (I went up there a lot at that time), sat down in the long grass, and prayed to be given words. I actually did that. One way or another, I got them.

ALU: Why do you write?

JUDITH: I write because I can’t help it. I don’t particularly enjoy it (though I do end most writing days pleased), but I’m compelled to do it. Possibly this is the expression of an earlier compulsion. Maritimers are given to making things. Otherwise, they don’t have them. In my case, the things made are records. Fiction is the medium, though I’m a poet too. I can’t imagine going through a whole life without turning some of it into something. I’m also enthralled by words. (See # 4).

ALU: How do you celebrate when you finish writing a book?

JUDITH: I start another one. Without a book on the go, I don’t know what to do. There’s only so many hours a day you can spend in the weight room.

ALU: How do you overcome creative blocks when they arise?

JUDITH: I sit there until I have the sense that the block is overcome, or that it will be, next time I sit down. This usually involves making myself write at least one new line connecting the blocked moment and the hoped-for unblocked one. I never quit if there’s something that feels insurmountable staring back at me. I’ll sit there all night if I have to. I also doom-scroll.

Judith Pond has published fiction and poetry in a variety of literary journals. She is the author of four poetry collections, and her debut novel, The Signs of No, was published in 2024, and her story collection That’s Where You Were, Then was published in 2025 . She lives in Calgary.