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Read on to get the latest tips and techniques on coaching and creativity and make a comment- I’d love to hear from you.

When you’re starting something new, whether it is the book you’ve been meaning to write or stepping sideways in your career, even starting a new fitness routine, be curious about the ways of of the new world because they’re going to be different. It sounds obvious, yet even a quantifiable goal that looks the same, like ‘write x by the end of the day’ takes on a very different form when x is not the       report your line manager demands but 3000 words of a book chapter. Same, same but different- same word count, same tools (words) but an entirely different process.

So, what can you do to make things easier and maximise the chances of success of your new venture? In this blog we’ll look at how to be confident when you’re a newbie and how to have the courage of your convictions.

Let’s say after years of scribbling notes you’ve finally taken the step of taking leave without pay to write the novel. It’s a big step and one your co-workers, friends and family necessarily know about. Easy, you think, I’ll simply set the alarm and instead of getting dressed to go to work, I’ll wander to my desk, bang out a thousand words before a late breakfast, a couple of thousand more by the end of the afternoon with a bit of revision to finish the day and bingo, twenty thousand words a week, that’s a first draft in a month.

Done. Manuscript to an agent and back to work to applause all round. Ye-e-s-s. Well, perhaps.

So you sit down the first day of your four weeks off and after a good start the ideas run out, or you don’t actually write at all and instead do more internet ‘research’, or go to the gym to channel your main character and get her voice. The days pass, the word count limps along, the work feels forced and you start to wonder, why isn’t it happening the way I thought it would? What has happened to all my energy and ideas?

Making assumptions is the first, completely normal trap we fall into, after all we need to assume know how and predict success or we wouldn’t have the courage to get started in the first place. When the usual way we do things doesn’t yield the usual results, the temptation is to see it as evidence we’re not the writer/manager/fitness buff we imagined. Wrong!

In fact, this is the moment the real creative process kicks in. The blank page, the wooden words and the difficulty of writing just one beautiful sentence (let alone a whole manuscript) are showing the way forward and what you need now is stop and look around at the new place in which you find yourself. It’s like Alice going down the rabbit hole and you need to get your bearings, be curious, try new ways and most importantly, have the courage to back yourself for as long as it takes. You are your best resource, your values are your compass and there is a way forward. It is up to you to find it.

However, as well as getting a reality check on everything you don’t yet know, there is a role for your old life too and here it is useful to remember that you have tried and succeeded in new roles before your old world has plenty of evidence of this- and you will again.

And what if you fail? What if, like J.K. Rowling, you write Harry Potter and it gets rejected by 12 publishing houses? Or what if rejection letters are ALL you get and the novel becomes just another folder on your laptop? That’s the most instructive outcome of all. I’m not going to pretend it is easy and I hope your first novel gets published and makes you a household name or whatever you want to be. However, if it doesn’t, well so be it. I’ve learnt there’s no such thing as failure, it’s all feedback and we don’t know our limits until we reach them. My bet is none of us are there yet.

Another time we’ll look at other people’s expectations and how to manage them. In the meantime, do you have experiences of getting started on new projects to share? I’d love to hear from you.