Inspired or intimidated?

[Robert M Derry]

Sometimes I read the works of great writers and I'm awed by their pure skill. I stumbled across this poem of Yeats' (I really should read more poetry!) and it really struck me:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

As a reader, I love the poem and as a writer, I'm inspired to write, but at the same time, intimated by the thought that I'll never write anything as good as this.

How do you feel when you read something that fills you with awe? Inspired or intimidated?

 

[Susan]

Inspired. It’s perfectly acceptable to be less talented than Yeats.

 

[Jackson Banks]

Inspired.

 

[RK Wallis]

Most definitely inspired and determined to try harder while marvelling at the skill.

 

[Barbara]

Inspired, open minded, like the world has just opened up to possibilities.

 

[Andrew Okey]

Definitely inspired. Three weeks ago I set out on a new novel, set in 1575. I sat looking at a blank screen for a while, too afraid to make the first step. So instead I made a cup of tea and read the first five pages of Wolf Hall, absorbing the amazing rhythm and vivid language, and that gave me enough momentum to get myself going (not that I'll ever write anything as good as Wolf Hall, of course, but its always better to be inspired than afraid!)

 

[Eva Ulian]

Inspired... All that is good generates goodness.

 

[Rich.]

How do you feel when you read something that fills you with awe? Inspired or intimidated?

Very much both, or it wouldn't be awe.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

If I read something inspiring in a crime novel, perhaps where the author describes landscape in a way that makes it a character in the story or shows some universal truth about what it means to be human through the internal dialogue of the protagonist, I feel encouraged that I'm on the right track with my writing. I want to produce a response in the reader, making them think about things differently—to go beneath the surface of the action.

 

[Eva Ulian]

I'm sorry Rich, but I don't think awe is synonymous to intimidation; one terrorizes you, the other makes you feel reverential.

 

[Rich.]

And you are of course entitled to your opinion, @Eva Ulian.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I agree with @Rich. It's both inspiring and intimidating. Sometimes I let the intimidation win, but only briefly, and then I think about how much I have to learn by reading excellent writers--they've left us these wonderful instruction manuals in the form of their stories (provided we can tear ourselves enough out of the story to analyse the writing itself to learn from it It's why I often read really good books more than once, because the first time I usually forget to analyse).