Write Now with Dinesh Thiru

Who are you?

Hi there - I’m Dinesh Thiru, a writer and dad, living in Barcelona. I grew up in North Carolina, married my college sweetheart from the University of Pennsylvania, and now we have two kids and a goofy chocolate lab.

What do you write?

Young adult is my first love, and my upcoming book, My Killer Family Reunion, is a YA mystery centered on an Indian-American family where everyone has a plot to kill Grand Mom. It’s inspired by all the Indian family reunions I went to as a kid, complete with pranks, competitions, drama, and my matriarchal grandmother (who’s now 103 years old!).

I always loved to read, and some of my earliest writing actually happened at family reunions. I re-wrote the lyrics to songs (like Afroman’s Because I Got High) and roasted my cousins at their weddings. For my Dad’s 70th birthday, I re-wrote the Gettysburg address to align with his immigrant story.

I didn’t try to write a novel until I was a stay-at-home Dad for my 2nd baby. I was journaling during nap time, and that journaling turned into short stories. Those short stories turned into books, and many books (and years) later, I’m now published!

As far as writing itself, there’s not really anything I avoid. I try to go where the story takes me, while listening to certain axioms, like: “characters get what they need, not what they want.”

At times, I find writing difficult (even lonely). That said, I totally love it. It’s just so fun and challenging and humbling. I’ve gotten so much from books I’ve read (a broader perspective, entertainment, wisdom), and I totally pinch myself, thinking that readers are now getting things from my books.

Where do you write?

I typically write from this tiny, arm-span wide office near our bedroom. There’s a built-in desk and my laptop and an air-conditioning unit that whirs away in the summer. On my left there’s a picture of one of my kids, lying against a rainbow-chalked sidewalk solar system that says, “DAD, you’re OUT OF THIS WORLD.” There’s a blocky printer and a spiral college-ruled notebook on the desk that I rarely use. Mostly, I write in Google Docs, and I have one file that’s the manuscript, and another file where I stash various ideas or make notes for revisions.

When do you write?

I usually wake-up at 6am and write until 7:15am. Then I help get my kids off to school, have breakfast, shower, and then I’m writing again from 8am until about 2pm with some breaks. After that, I handle home / family / personal stuff (e.g., walk the dog, get groceries, cook dinner, gym, pick-up the kids). I’m a morning person, and I like to be productive, which is why I like to write early. I’m in a much better mood the whole day if I’ve done some writing.

When I’m writing a first draft, I like to set word count goals. If I’m in the first half of a manuscript, it’s usually 800-1,500 words per day. If I’m in the second half, it’s 2,000-3,000 words.

With My Killer Family Reunion, the first draft poured out of me in 6 weeks in early 2022. But then I spent another year revising, and it didn’t actually sell to Simon & Schuster until late 2024.

When revising, I usually have a giant bullet-point list of stuff that needs to change. I strike-through items as I go, to give myself a sense of progress.

At a very high-level, my yearly goals are usually something like: 1) write a new first draft of a manuscript, 2) revise 1-2 manuscripts with my agent/editor

Why do you write?

Maybe this isn’t the correct answer, but I write for myself. Because it’s fun and challenging and I get a lot of joy from it. Often, my wife will find me in the office with some stupid smile on my face as I’m re-reading a passage.

Writing can be quite frustrating and it takes a lot of perseverance, so I think at some level, you have to enjoy the process… otherwise, you’ll never make it through!

For my readers, I hope they have fun with my books and connect with the characters’ emotional journeys. I remember my editor for My Killer Family Reunion, saying she found the book “hilarious, substantive, and thrilling.” That made me so happy.

How do you overcome writer's block?

It’s never easy, but a few strategies I use include: 1) giving myself permission to write something crappy (and revise later), 2) walking my dog (but without earbuds), so my mind can percolate and solve book problems, 3) getting up early, so I feel I have to write, otherwise I’ll be wasting my time, 4) drawing on personal experiences to inspire breakthroughs.

With My Killer Family Reunion, an early draft had too much time around the home, so I drew on some silly memories from my childhood reunions, and figured out how to inject new settings and make the book more fun.

Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?

I like to read (e.g., Dial A for Aunties is an all-time favorite; it’s adult, but the same murder-humor-contemporary mash-up as My Killer Family Reunion). I like to cook (e.g., I own six Ottolenghi cookbooks, and have made almost every recipe in Simple). I like adventure sports (e.g., I did this big hike to Annapurna Base Camp in the Himalayas with my cousin and two friends last year). And, of course, I like to attend family reunions (we recently had a 25-person reunion!).

My thanks to Dinesh Thiru for today's interview.