12 or 20 (second series) questions with Judith Pond

Judith Pond [photo credit: Gerald Mills] has published fiction and poetry in a wide variety of literary journals. She is the author of four poetry collections, including A Shape of Breath. The Signs of No is her debut novel.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?  

My first book was published a very long time ago. I guess the main way it changed my life was that it astonished me by getting published. I remember thinking, Now I can be as eccentric as I want! I guess I assumed or hoped that all writers were weird like me. In more a more serious sense, my first book was poetry, as were my subsequent three, and coming to prose through poetry was for me the best way to learn my craft, as poetry is all about rhythm, subtlety, word play, and economy, which are fantastic tools for prose writing.

There’s not a lot of comparison between my current writing (novel form) and my previous work other than the economy that I learned as a poet. I am very glad that I trained in that form.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction? 

I started out attempting to write short stories, and then turned to poetry, I think because I fell in love with someone I probably shouldn’t have. Nothing like stolen love to make a person write poems. I never expected to be a novel writer, but at some point it seemed like a good thing to attempt a longer project.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I think that a writing project is sort of already there, and then when the time is right, starts nudging me to get at it. They seem to line up like airplanes waiting to take off. For me, writing is a slow process because I’m a perfectionist and a bit of a coward. The next sentence is holy terror for me. So I dawdle and polish. Drafts appear looking polished but it’s only because I want them to be done, and they never are. Three drafts is a minimum for me. I don’t take notes very much. It’s more a kind of groping, and I let the words lead to some extent. I don’t outline, which (outlining) seems a bit artificial, and ultimately not very useful. I’m more organic at it, or maybe stubborn, and that can get me in trouble. Thank God for my tiny writers’ group of three. Those other two guys have no trouble pointing out where I’m off the rails.  

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning? 

For me a poem comes from an image that I build words around. With a novel, I assume that’s what it is (a novel) from the very beginning.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? 

I haven’t done a reading for a good while, and they do stress me a bit, but I have a background in teaching, and that helps.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are? 

I confess that I don’t care much about current questions, though of course they find their way into my work. For example, I’m a big ally of trans and queer people, having a child who has transitioned, and that process definitely informed The Signs of No. Other than the ‘current’ things I happen to bump into, if I have theoretical concerns, they’re mainly around not hurting other people. The question I’m trying to answer in my current project is about how far it is possible to go in the service of love (filial, erotic, parental, patriotic, etc.). To what extremity in other words, is it possible to push a situation or a conviction in that service, however one defines it.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be? 

I know it’s been said, but I still think that the writer’s role is in some sense to show us ourselves. To show us the world through a particular lens: love, for example, or duration, or loss.

I haven’t done much work with an editor, but I have found it both essential and illuminating to work with an outside editor. No way can I see everything I need to see about what I’ve put on paper. I love being shown what a scene, for example, could be, if pushed a little farther, thanks to an intelligent reader’s POV. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? 

Richard Ford said in an interview that you shouldn’t think that all you’re going to have to do in a rewrite is ‘go through and change the pronouns.’ He says that you are going to rip and tear and rummage in a draft (I now call that nice, pretty, seemingly-all-finished draft my ‘grab bag’) and keep only what you can use. He says it isn’t necessarily going to be the same book at all, once you’re done with it, and that comment has given me more courage and freedom than pretty much any other advice I’ve received. You don’t just write The End and think you’re done.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?

Short stories from poetry wasn’t too bad, but novel from short stories has been quite a jump, and yet I am finding it suits me as a form. I like that big oversized messy overcoat that I can button up and keep warm  in( if I’m lucky) for a good long while.  Like other writers I’ve followed, I find that I’m quite lost when a big project is over.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I write every day, though not in set hours. I kind of live writing, so it’s always on my mind. On weekdays and Sundays I swim first thing in the morning (I do a lot of prewriting in the pool), and then brew up the coffee and get going. I don’t always get a lot done in a day but if I have some significant contact—even if it’s just deciding that a scene should be moved and where I could put it—with my work in a day, I’m happy.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? 

I read people I admire for inspiration. Invariably I come away thinking, I’m going to try that! I don’t get stalled a lot. I can’t tolerate it. I never (unless something’s really wrong) let myself up from the desk until I feel like I’ve pushed the work to a place it’s not scary to start up from the next day.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? 

I guess it depends which home. Nova Scotia would be the air, I guess. It’s lush and soft and shocking when you get off the plane. Calgary is my husband’s housecleaning products. ;)

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art? 

I totally agree about books coming from books, but I love dance, and I do find strong inspiration in visual art. Among other things, I studied Art History, and I worked for a decade in a university Art History department categorizing and filing images; that work gave me my first collection of poems, and still informs my work constantly.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? 

I once had a therapist accuse me of ‘being in love with a dead woman’ (Virginia Woolf). I devoured every word by and about her and about the Bloomsbury group when I was young, and Woolf still gives me wondrous shivers. She taught me how to write letters that are daring and fun and defamiliarized, for example—or at least to enjoy trying. To mention Ford again, though I don’t write like him at all and couldn’t, he is a major ‘lamp unto my feet,’ to quote another great book. I’m reading Atwood again right now after a long hiatus (Old Babes in the Wood) and really loving it. I’m glad I was early exposed to the Bible, and should mention that, since I see I’ve inadvertently referenced it above. I can’t think of a better preparation for a writing career than a foundation in the King James Version and an education in Art History. Other than those books, I’m in Mexico right now, and I can’t stop thinking about Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry).

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would like to dance more. By that I mean learn more kinds of dance. And I would like to be friends with a horse.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer? 

If I hadn’t been a writer, I think I’d have done a PhD and been a prof somewhere. I’d have liked that, maybe. The other thing would be that I would have loved to have been a singin’ chick in a band. I’m pretty wistful about that.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? 

Life is infinitely puzzling to me. I write to figure stuff out.  

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? 

I just finished The Sportswriter for the second time. I’ll never know how Ford achieves so much with so much understatement and apparent humility and gentle anarchy. As for films, I really enjoyed Saltburn. Great acting, beautiful cinematography, gorgeously creepy.

20 - What are you currently working on? 

Right now, I’m about to start edits on a collection of linked stories that will come out in the fall of ‘25 with Freehand Press of Calgary, and I’m working on a next novel. What I want to explore, as touched on above, is how far a person might be willing to ‘go’ in the service of what they perceive to be love. A secondary thread in that novel will be (I think so far) a consideration of the ways in which our original woundings operate subliminally and significantly in our lives.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;