Chuma nwokolo biography of albert einstein

Some humour comes to me naturally. I am the sort of person who arrives home after a visit and suddenly thinks up the killer repartee for a conversation that ended hours earlier. As mere man I can slap my head in frustration. I think I should probably starve if I were to eke a living as a stand-up comedian. But the writer can appropriate the suite of the editor, if he wants, and that is where the timing and delivery of humour writing can be finessed.

I was passionate about

A sense of humour can be a valuable subversive trait in us humans. It is the ultimate rebellion: the refusal to be crushed by the natural weight of despair, to find a reason to laugh instead. I think a sense of humour that can make big, weighty issues more relatable is worth cultivating because it can trigger the positive frame of mind that opens up a reading mind to surprise, and the possibility of breaking dysfunctional cycles.

Humour writing has its limits. It is a fine line, but you want to be careful when you crack jokes, however black, at a tragic funeral funerals can be sad without being tragic. Again you read stories about black characters modelled after real people and — as the body count in the genocide ratchets up — no matter the skills of the writer — you ask yourself if you want to be laughing about this.

My effectiveness as a satirist is probably a question best suited for my readers and critics. As an activist tool, we also may have to commission a research into the number of revolutionary actions triggered by my fiction! Yet, as a tool for the observer of society, satire can certainly be rewarding because it enforces a certain discipline of emotion.

You are writing at a second remove from the provocations of your prose, especially any activist convictions lurking around your subconscious. So your prose can pay lip service to the decorum stipulated by polite society while you use the spaces in between the words to fillet the target of your fiction.