Write Now with Ahmad Saber

Who are you?

Hello! I am Ahmad Saber, doctor by day and YA author by night, a global citizen, an avid traveler, and lover of cats. Although I’m barely there anymore, Vancouver, Canada, is home. When not writing, I’m either treating patients for various autoimmune ailments, meditating about self-love and existentialism, or listening to Taylor Swift on repeat. (Before someone asks, my top favorite Taylor track is “August”).

What do you write?

I describe my writing genre as “YA contemporary with lots of heart.” Well-developed characters and grounded romance will always be a strong draw for my creativity and you’d usually find themes of love, coming of age, and self-discovery in my writing. (As for themes I’d avoid, probably overt violence and gore?)

While I always had the writing plasmid dormant in my DNA, the phenotype came out fairly late. Orientation day of my final year of medical residency training, I vividly remember sitting in a mind-meltingly boring lecture, going, “This can’t be all there is to my life.” So instead of paying attention to the lecture, I whipped out my laptop and started writing and never looked back!

I absolutely LOVE writing because it’s basically affordable therapy. By getting lost in my writing, I find pieces of myself.

Where do you write?

As long as I have my beloved Macbook Air laptop in my hand, I can write literally anywhere. I don’t really have a set “writing space” or aesthetic, and am blessed with being able to function without coffee. Some of the places I’ve written:

• Airplanes
• On the beach
• On a train meandering between the Swiss Alps
• A tiny attic in Heidelberg, Germany
• My toilet seat
• La BNF Richelieu
• A cute, hidden café in Auckland, New Zealand
• At school, during lectures
• Lunch break between seeing patients
• A charming Parisian apartment right by the Seine

When do you write?

Unfortunately, I don’t operate well with writing sprints or word count goals. While my debut novel baby was conceived during NaNoWriMo, I find imposing a strict time limit hinders my creative flow. A typical writing session will have to wait for inspiration to strike, and I am sitting ready for it at all times. That’s why my laptop comes everywhere with me.

Why do you write?

I write because it helps me get to know myself better and helps me escape into a world without judgment and anxiety. When I’m deep into writing a scene, the sense of time stops and I really enjoy that flow state that results. As for what fuels me, it ALWAYS starts with a character. I get curious about a character in my head and really want to tell their story and hope I get to learn something in the process. As my favorite author, John Green, says, it’s really cool to inhabit another character’s consciousness, if even temporarily, if even fictional. The inspiration behind my writing will always be the pain I’ve carried inside me for a long time and channeling it into stories of radical self-acceptance, self-discovery, and self-love.

How do you overcome writer's block?

Oh, the dreaded writer’s block! The naked truth? I don’t have any tips for overcoming it. It usually feels external to me, as if it’s something beyond my direct control. Usually, “real life stuff” is a cause for me. But I always keep the spark alive and never forget the joy of writing, and the block ALWAYS eventually passes. Some things that do kind of help are walks, travelling, working a short story instead, and reminding myself that my worth as a person is not dependent on any one single thing (and that includes my writer identity).

Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?

I LOVE life, so this list could go on and on! I’ll just mention a few of the honorable mentions:

• Solving medical mystery cases (Rheumatology specialty is ripe for that!)
• Planning my next meaningful travel trip, where I don’t get to just be a tourist but engage with the local population (e.g. setting up locum doctor jobs in various countries around the world)
• Personal development, inner work, and childhood trauma healing
• Cuddling with a cat (though I don’t have one of my own yet!)
• Fantasizing about the time when I’d get kissed for the very first time
• Random acts of generosity
• Sitting with my demons
• Creating cool videos for my Instagram stories, or practicing my photography skills
• Listening to either “Lover,” “I Did Something Bad,” or “August” on repeat
• Actively choosing to be part of my friends’ lives
• Playing café with my niece, or drowning my baby nephew in kisses

My thanks to Ahmad Saber for today's interview.