Writing is about letters, words and language, right? WRONG. Writing has nothing to do with language. It is actually about numbers, fractions, sums, deductions, multiple-choice questions and the whole BODMAS routine.
Now, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a successful writer? Her great turn of phrase? The wonderful characters he’s created? Those amazing new words, jentacular and lamprophony, that you learnt from his book and are dying to use? Or how many copies she’s sold? How much advance royalty he received? Or how he divided his loot with his ex-wife after being caught “having tea” with a junior editor in the watchman’s cabin?
Here are basic math/logic problems for anyone who is a writer, planning on being a writer, is in the publishing industry or just the average Indian Peeping Tom who loves to peek into the financial lives of others.
Problem 1
Writer A writes literary fiction. Writer B is a successful re-teller of epics. X is a point on a straight road 11 km from the Lit Fest venue. If A is running at 20 kmph and B is running at 19 kmph towards the venue from Point X, who will get there first?
Tick the correct answer.
Option 1: B – because even though A is the faster runner, he will stop midway to write a lyrical passage about loss and redemption during which time B will overtake him.
Option 2: A – not because he is faster. But because B will lose his way on a perfectly straight road as the gods are pissed off with his crappy interpretation of their lives and will it so.
Option 3: Neither. Because an over-enthusiastic NRI writer at her first ever lit fest will run over both of them with her SUV.
Problem 2
If a small-time writer gets his annual royalty statement with the figure 65,500 on it and he celebrates his success by having a night out with the boys that costs him 18,250, how much will he be left with?
Tick the correct answer.
Option 1: Minus 83,750 – because the small-time writer has failed to notice 65, 500 is how much he owes the publishing house.
Option 2: 47,250, because 65, 500 minus 18, 250 equals 47,250. But then he’ll wake up and find out it was all a dream.
Option 3: 0 – because at the Chennai launch of his book, 65,500 was the exact amount the veg bondas cost. And bondas not being part of the contract, the amount will be deducted from his account soon.
Problem 3
If three writers – A, an eighty-year-old novelist from Nigeria with full-blown Alzheimer’s; B, a young woman whose book is titled Is it or is it not? Tell me, na, Jaanu, quickly?; and C, a former Naxalite-turned-cookbook writer specialising in chicken recipes – are sharing the dais at a lit fest and they have a 45-minute session, who will hog the microphone the most?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: C, because what if he still has connections?
Option 2: None of the above. It is D, the moderator, a 4’9’’ poet of erotic verse who is not going to let the fact that she hasn’t been invited as a panelist thwart her, and recites an 18-minute ode to her passionate affair with a llama.
Option 3: E, a 74-old audience member who tells everyone the heart-rending story of his gout and resultant complications.
Problem 4
A writer, an editor and a senior marketing person (A, B and C respectively) go to a bar to discuss the marketing strategy for the writer’s new book. A has 4 large pegs of whisky, B has 3 glasses of red wine and C has 7 tequila shots. How many copies of the book did they sell in the first year?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: None, because they forgot all about the book.
Option 2: 2500 copies, because that’s the number of copies the writer said he’d buy back after a tearful, smoochy farewell where they swore eternal friendship and posted a groupie on FB.
Option 3: This sum doesn’t make sense because imagine a writer stopping after 4 pegs! LOL.
Problem 5
If a young, shimmery-outfitted copy editor from a major publishing house is looking at your manuscript and updating her FB and Twitter statuses – which is very much part of her job, you bozo, don’t judge! – what is the ratio between the new typos introduced in your book and the “hottiee!”s she gets on her latest selfie?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: 1:2, because the second “hottie!” loses its punch and doesn’t distract her enough to press random keys.
Option 2: 0, because, c’mon, where is the question of introducing anything when the manuscript is just lying around with a two-month film of dust?
Option 3: 0, because the writer hires his retired ICSE English teacher, Mrs Sarvamangalam, to look at it.
Problem 6
If in a month, a non-Delhi writer makes 11 unanswered calls, sends 18 text messages, 3 Twitter DMs, 2 smoke signals, and 4 tantric-assisted telepathic messages to his publisher, what is the status of his book that is to come out shortly?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: It was published the previous month and has already been remaindered.
Option 2: It has been postponed because Ram Singh, the former watchman-cum-vice-president (marketing)’s book Easy-To-Make Origami Animals Using Pages From Unsold Books has jumped the queue.
Option 3: The publishers have changed phone numbers, mail IDs, Twitter handles, address and ownership and forgot to inform the writer because they are all on a Balinese beach unveiling the name/logo of the new publishing house.
Problem 7
If you send your ambitious 450-page novel to a new literary agent you’ve discovered on the Net and he’s responded saying it is not bad and that he’s sending it to 5 major publishers, you are ecstatic, 6 months pass and you hear nothing from him, what do you think has happened?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: All 5 publishers love your book and are bare-knuckle boxing each other in the streets to publish you.
Option 2: He has sent it to 5 publishers but with his name as author instead of yours.
Option 3: He has sent it to 5 publishers but they publish cookbooks, law books, vastu, homoeopathy, and Bhojpuri erotica.
Problem 8
You are in the presence of the reclusive, award-winning writer of the profoundly depressing Blues Trilog’ – The Debilitating Dysthymia of Debdutta De, Everyone Turns To Dust and Does Heaven Stock Prozac? – in his cheerful house which he shares with his lovely wife, two healthy children and an adorable Labrador called Smiley. He’s the guy whose writing has at different times made you want to put your head in a high-speed Heidelberg offset machine or strangle yourself with the nada on your chaddis. What do you do?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: You hit him 8 times on the head with a hardbound copy of his first book.
Option 2: You make him sit on the pointy side of his award for 5 minutes.
Option 3: You steal the Lab and let him know what “really depressed” means.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli has written two novels (Ice Boys in Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut) and a play (Dear Anita). He is currently writing his third book seated on furniture made with the unsold copies of his first two books in the ratio 1: 2.
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Now, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a successful writer? Her great turn of phrase? The wonderful characters he’s created? Those amazing new words, jentacular and lamprophony, that you learnt from his book and are dying to use? Or how many copies she’s sold? How much advance royalty he received? Or how he divided his loot with his ex-wife after being caught “having tea” with a junior editor in the watchman’s cabin?
Here are basic math/logic problems for anyone who is a writer, planning on being a writer, is in the publishing industry or just the average Indian Peeping Tom who loves to peek into the financial lives of others.
Problem 1
Writer A writes literary fiction. Writer B is a successful re-teller of epics. X is a point on a straight road 11 km from the Lit Fest venue. If A is running at 20 kmph and B is running at 19 kmph towards the venue from Point X, who will get there first?
Tick the correct answer.
Option 1: B – because even though A is the faster runner, he will stop midway to write a lyrical passage about loss and redemption during which time B will overtake him.
Option 2: A – not because he is faster. But because B will lose his way on a perfectly straight road as the gods are pissed off with his crappy interpretation of their lives and will it so.
Option 3: Neither. Because an over-enthusiastic NRI writer at her first ever lit fest will run over both of them with her SUV.
Problem 2
If a small-time writer gets his annual royalty statement with the figure 65,500 on it and he celebrates his success by having a night out with the boys that costs him 18,250, how much will he be left with?
Tick the correct answer.
Option 1: Minus 83,750 – because the small-time writer has failed to notice 65, 500 is how much he owes the publishing house.
Option 2: 47,250, because 65, 500 minus 18, 250 equals 47,250. But then he’ll wake up and find out it was all a dream.
Option 3: 0 – because at the Chennai launch of his book, 65,500 was the exact amount the veg bondas cost. And bondas not being part of the contract, the amount will be deducted from his account soon.
Problem 3
If three writers – A, an eighty-year-old novelist from Nigeria with full-blown Alzheimer’s; B, a young woman whose book is titled Is it or is it not? Tell me, na, Jaanu, quickly?; and C, a former Naxalite-turned-cookbook writer specialising in chicken recipes – are sharing the dais at a lit fest and they have a 45-minute session, who will hog the microphone the most?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: C, because what if he still has connections?
Option 2: None of the above. It is D, the moderator, a 4’9’’ poet of erotic verse who is not going to let the fact that she hasn’t been invited as a panelist thwart her, and recites an 18-minute ode to her passionate affair with a llama.
Option 3: E, a 74-old audience member who tells everyone the heart-rending story of his gout and resultant complications.
Problem 4
A writer, an editor and a senior marketing person (A, B and C respectively) go to a bar to discuss the marketing strategy for the writer’s new book. A has 4 large pegs of whisky, B has 3 glasses of red wine and C has 7 tequila shots. How many copies of the book did they sell in the first year?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: None, because they forgot all about the book.
Option 2: 2500 copies, because that’s the number of copies the writer said he’d buy back after a tearful, smoochy farewell where they swore eternal friendship and posted a groupie on FB.
Option 3: This sum doesn’t make sense because imagine a writer stopping after 4 pegs! LOL.
Problem 5
If a young, shimmery-outfitted copy editor from a major publishing house is looking at your manuscript and updating her FB and Twitter statuses – which is very much part of her job, you bozo, don’t judge! – what is the ratio between the new typos introduced in your book and the “hottiee!”s she gets on her latest selfie?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: 1:2, because the second “hottie!” loses its punch and doesn’t distract her enough to press random keys.
Option 2: 0, because, c’mon, where is the question of introducing anything when the manuscript is just lying around with a two-month film of dust?
Option 3: 0, because the writer hires his retired ICSE English teacher, Mrs Sarvamangalam, to look at it.
Problem 6
If in a month, a non-Delhi writer makes 11 unanswered calls, sends 18 text messages, 3 Twitter DMs, 2 smoke signals, and 4 tantric-assisted telepathic messages to his publisher, what is the status of his book that is to come out shortly?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: It was published the previous month and has already been remaindered.
Option 2: It has been postponed because Ram Singh, the former watchman-cum-vice-president (marketing)’s book Easy-To-Make Origami Animals Using Pages From Unsold Books has jumped the queue.
Option 3: The publishers have changed phone numbers, mail IDs, Twitter handles, address and ownership and forgot to inform the writer because they are all on a Balinese beach unveiling the name/logo of the new publishing house.
Problem 7
If you send your ambitious 450-page novel to a new literary agent you’ve discovered on the Net and he’s responded saying it is not bad and that he’s sending it to 5 major publishers, you are ecstatic, 6 months pass and you hear nothing from him, what do you think has happened?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: All 5 publishers love your book and are bare-knuckle boxing each other in the streets to publish you.
Option 2: He has sent it to 5 publishers but with his name as author instead of yours.
Option 3: He has sent it to 5 publishers but they publish cookbooks, law books, vastu, homoeopathy, and Bhojpuri erotica.
Problem 8
You are in the presence of the reclusive, award-winning writer of the profoundly depressing Blues Trilog’ – The Debilitating Dysthymia of Debdutta De, Everyone Turns To Dust and Does Heaven Stock Prozac? – in his cheerful house which he shares with his lovely wife, two healthy children and an adorable Labrador called Smiley. He’s the guy whose writing has at different times made you want to put your head in a high-speed Heidelberg offset machine or strangle yourself with the nada on your chaddis. What do you do?
Tick the correct answer.
Options 1: You hit him 8 times on the head with a hardbound copy of his first book.
Option 2: You make him sit on the pointy side of his award for 5 minutes.
Option 3: You steal the Lab and let him know what “really depressed” means.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli has written two novels (Ice Boys in Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut) and a play (Dear Anita). He is currently writing his third book seated on furniture made with the unsold copies of his first two books in the ratio 1: 2.
