Arushi Avachat: You Are Your Most Important Reader
In this interview, author Arushi Avachat discusses forcing herself out of her own head to write her new YA novel, Rani Deshpande Takes the Wheel.
Arushi Avachat is a writer from the Bay Area. She studied English, Political Science, and South Asian Studies at UCLA. A 2024 Marshall Scholar, Arushi received her MSt in English and American Studies from Oxford University. Arushi loves dark chocolate, Jane Austen books, and California winters. She is the author of Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment. Follow her on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
In this interview, Arushi discusses forcing herself out of her own head to write her new YA novel, Rani Deshpande Takes the Wheel, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Arushi Avachat
Literary agent: Rebecca Rodd and Kerry Sparks, LGR Literary
Book title: Rani Deshpande Takes the Wheel
Publisher: Wednesday Books / Macmillan
Release date: May 19, 2026
Genre/category: Young Adult
Previous titles: Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment
Elevator pitch: After a challenging freshman year of college, Rani is determined to get her life back on track—but her packed summer checklist is disrupted by a detour right into love.
What prompted you to write this book?
During my freshman year of college, I felt an itch to capture the growing pains of starting university and forging your own path in the world. For so many of us, especially immigrant daughters, it’s college and not high school that serves as our true young adult landscape. College offers a first taste of independence, far from the monitoring (though loving) gaze of over-involved families. But what happens when you feel like you’re doing college wrong? Rani picks up at this inflection point.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Over five years! Rani lived in my head for so long before I started drafting. I started college in the fall of 2020, which is when the idea for the novel first began taking shape. Over the next couple years, I focused on editing and publishing my debut novel, Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment. But Rani always simmered in the background, and by senior year of college, I had begun drafting. Now, almost two years post-grad, she’ll be in readers’ hands!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Everyone had warned me about the sophomore slump, but I didn’t take it seriously until I was in the thick of it. My drafting experience with Arya had been so private and personal; Rani was the first work I’d ever written on deadline, with the guarantee of an audience. Nothing was worse for my creative process than the knowledge that my story would be read. I really had to force myself out of my own head while drafting and build more discipline as a writer. Being an author had been my dream job since childhood. With Rani, I had to learn to actually treat my craft as a job.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
So much of drafting is about excavating the story you’re actually trying to tell, and Rani was no different. The story morphed so much from initial inception to final draft. I wrote the first act of Rani as my honors thesis at UCLA, and at that time, I thought I wanted to write a loose reimagining of Emma. Save for an eccentric father figure and a Knightley-inspired love interest, this framework fell away almost entirely as I reevaluated what felt most pressing to me. I really learned to let myself veer off course and let a story take me in new directions while drafting Rani.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
It’s never too late to make things better for yourself. Rani feels behind in so many arenas of her life, and over the course of the summer, she has to force herself out of sitting in her feelings and instead become proactive about building a happier life. I hope Rani’s story can be a reminder to readers that even in the face of disappointment, you’re in charge of your own life, and something better always looms on the horizon.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
You are your most important reader. We write because we must, because we have an impulse to work through our feelings and experiences and questions in this medium. Even as you pursue a public career in writing, I think it’s so important to keep your practice sacred and protected from outside noise. Write the story you feel desperate to read, that feels most true to your heart.
