Colorless

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard spends much of the piece writing about the isolation and pain that surround the life of a writer. At one point she even writes, "It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation." This quote catches the eyes of the reader immediately because some may believe the writer's life is just as romantic or adventurous as the stories he or she writes about. And yet, Dillard goes on for quite some time explaining how she will never understand why people wish to be writers, when all they do is sit in a small room by themselves, the only company being pieces of paper.

When Dillard writes that the life of the writer is "colorless to the point of sensory deprivation," it sticks out not only because it goes against the belief many people have of writers, but also because of the language she uses. Writers have this reputation of being able to come up with amazingly poetic phrases that capture the meaning of life within them, creating colors of emotion. Writers can make readers travel on a sensational trip; making them laugh, cry, and feel for the very characters they are reading about. But then there's Dillard, who uses the word "colorless" and the phrase "sensory deprivation" to describe a writer; the very person who writes stories filled with all sorts of colors and senses!

It's rather ironic to think about a writer never experiencing the sort of life he or she spends so much time writing about; that the very person who writes about the lives everyone else wants to live, is in fact, the furthest removed from the world and the people who live in it. And yet, that very concept almost makes the idea even more romantic and poetic.

Ian Hocking is a writer from the United Kingdom, wrote a response on his blog to a research study that involved the lives of writers and what the impact of them always being isolated truly was. It's a fascinating topic with interesting results, and it can be found here.