Author Birthday – 7 November – Sabaa Tahir

Happy Birthday, Sabaa Tahir, born on 7 November 1983.

Sabaa Tahir Quotes

1. I always wanted to write, but never admitted it to myself. I’ve told stories since I was a little girl, and began writing them down as soon as I figured out how.
2. I find character summaries useful—a few pages where I write out character history, likes, dislikes, and personality quirks.
3. But I learned the most about my characters when I ‘interviewed’ them. I got a friend to ask me questions, and took on the personalities of my characters as I attempted to answer those questions. The interviews made me really consider who these characters were and what they wanted. It was weird, but it was also a revelation.
4. When working with a book idea, I try to sketch out a few paragraphs worth of action—just to see if the idea has legs or if it falls apart. Once all my thoughts are down—and if I feel like the idea is still solid—I try to organise what I’ve got into a few coherent chapters.
5. Music and coffee. Without either of those, I’m no good. The coffee wakes me up, and the music gets my brain moving—it’s basically the fastest way into whatever scene I’m working on that day.
6. Don’t waste inordinate amounts of time polishing small sections of your writing. Figure out your story first. Polish later.
7. Show your work to people. Recently, I fell into an old (bad) pattern. I’d written 50 pages of something and was certain it was horrible, but hadn’t actually shown pages to anyone. Don’t do that! Find trusted readers amongst writer friends, and get feedback.
8. Don’t make excuses for yourself. You can waste years that way. If you find yourself repeatedly saying you haven’t written because you’re too tired/busy/blocked etc., then rethink how badly you want to be a writer.
9. I sometimes borrow certain quirks or characteristics from people I know, but I never wholly base characters off of people I know. It’s way more fun to make them up.
10. For a writer, burnout means you don’t have any ideas, and you hate all the ones you do have. You can’t seem to remember how to write a book. That happens to me every few months. I try to acknowledge that it’s not that I’m just tired for a day or bored of the story—it’s that I’m burned out. My creative well is completely empty, and I need to refill it.

Source for quotes 1-9: Penguin and 10: Elle

Sabaa Tahir is an American young adult novelist best known for her New York Times-bestselling An Ember in the Ashes series. In 2020, two books in the series, An Ember in the Ashes and A Torch Against the Night, were included in Time magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. The series has been translated into more than 35 languages. Her novel All My Rage won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry. After exploring other genres, Tahir returned to fantasy with Heir in 2024, which won the Libby Award for Young Adult Book of the Year. Her novels explore themes of power, oppression, racism, family, identity, survival, love, and rebellion. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Source for Image: Author’s website

by Amanda Patterson
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