Writer’s Block: Zorana Sadiq

All Lit Up: Tell us about your new book, Comfort Food. What can readers expect?

ZORANA SADIQ: My book, Comfort Food, is my second play.  It centres around a small family—a mother and her teenage son. I wrote it because I wanted to explore the current moment for some young people today, one with far more information, far more worry, and in some cases, a kind of attendant loneliness in the world. I’m also interested in the beautiful, uneasy truth of parenting; that our children essentially teach us what they need, and that we may well need to adjust the tenor of our love languages to suit them specifically.  

ALU: What has been your most rewarding moment as a writer? 

ZORANA: There have been many rewarding moments as a fairly new playwright in my career over the last five years.  My first play, MixTape, was a one-person show, which I performed myself. Comfort Food was the first time that I was casting another actor in a play I had written.  We held auditions for the part of the son and saw about 30 actors for the role.  One after another, these wonderful actors came in and breathed life into a character I had dreamed up in my head. I found it very moving and humbling that such skilled artists would breathe life into words I had written.  

ALU: Why do you write?

ZORANA: I write in response to questions that dog me—some kind of knot that I cannot worry out. This doesn’t mean that I answer questions, or find certainty when I write, but rather, that I can see space in between the threads. I feel as though I’m my best, most curious, most open-hearted self when I’m writing. It’s a nice feeling. You want to be that open vessel, it’s essential to the act of making good things, I think.   

ALU: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about? 

ZORANA: I’m currently acting in an adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s 1994 novel, A Fine Balance. While we were workshopping the play, all of the actors reread the book.  It’s a particular thrill to do a theatrical adaptation of a novel because the book becomes almost like a huge tome of stage directions. And you read it with a very particular, detail-obsessed eye.  It’s a gorgeous novel and works on me very differently at this age. That might be the sign of an excellent book, that it enters you beautifully, at multiple points in your life.  

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

ZORANA: Usually my creative blocks come from when I am having trouble holding the entire story in my hand. This happens when I’m deep into rewrites but sometimes still haunted by earlier choices. When that happens, I have to get creative with how to look at the story.  Sometimes it’s Post-It notes, sometimes I need to get someone else to read my play to me, sometimes I need to write cheat sheets or draw maps, something off the computer screen usually. It always feels a bit indulgent, as if I’ve stopped to do arts and crafts, but it usually is very key for me in my process.