Chess. Ice skating. Radio 4.

I've always had a tendency to immediately abandon anything that feels daunting. This is why, afraid of grazed knees and humiliation, I never learnt to ride a bike. And that wasn't all. Year after year, challenges have fallen by the wayside. Hockey. Physics. Telling jokes. High heels. Skiing. Cryptic crosswords. Karaoke. Hosting dinner parties. Eyeshadow. As soon as I noticed my pitiful lack of natural ability in these important areas, I gave up trying.

I've always thought that I've got a sort of an instinct for what I can and can't do, and I'm a strong believer in listening to it. (Deep down, I sort of think I usually know best. Don't tell anyone.) So as soon as I get that feeling of dread in my tummy that says No, no, I'm not going to be able to do this, it's going to be AWFUL, I attempt to retain as much of my dignity as possible by walking away, changing the subject or leaving the country.

Recently I was commissioned to write something that took me wildly out of my comfort zone. I can't go into detail here, but it's something fictional and funny. This is not the kind of writing I do. I don't do laugh-out-loud character-based narrative. I do pointless observational chatter, or sometimes PR fluff in various forms. Nevertheless, I accepted the commission because I thought it sounded like something I would want to read. I didn't think much beyond that.

That's right - I'm stupid.

When I sat down to write it, I went from jaunty excitement to full-scale horror within about fifteen panicky minutes. I attempted to draft a couple of sentences. The room started to feel like a humour vacuum. I couldn't think of anything funny at all. Not only was it not funny, it wasn't even plausible, and something implausible has to be pretty fucking funny in order to make the reader suspend disbelief. I began to feel sick. I put it off for days. I asked the opinions of the many funny writers I know. All of their reasoned advice was blanked out by my own inner voice saying They can do it just because they can do it. They were born with it. You weren't.

I came really, really close to calling up and telling my employers I was going to have to pull out of the project. It would have been really humiliating and unprofessional, and I've never done it before, but I felt I'd rather do that than send them something cringingly bad. I thought about this for days, and then I sat down and forced myself to write a first draft.

It wasn't hilarious. That's not going to be the tidy and uplifting ending to the story. But it wasn't awful. When I sent it in to give them an initial direction of where I was going with it, they said they'd laughed out loud. Possibly they were exaggerating to be pleasant, but that's ok. The point is, so far it's not a disaster. I had anticipated awkward silences, and perhaps a rebrief or some firm suggestions as to how to improve it. But they don't seem worried at all.

I haven't finished it yet, and I'm probably putting a curse on myself by writing this before the work is successfully complete. But I'm weirdly not scared about it any more. What it appears to have proved is that sometimes, we shouldn't listen to our fearful gut instinct - the one that says, leave it, you're going to mess it up. Sometimes it might be holding us back. The project may not end up a roaring success, but I don't think I'm going to do a terrible job. And if I get offered this kind of work again, it won't keep me awake in a panic every night.

Maybe I'm being boring and sanctimonious in this post - sorry if so. I'm writing it as a sort of reminder to myself, because this small experience has been an eye-opener for me. It means that maybe I can do the other kinds of writing I've ruled out too. Maybe I can write proper fiction if I wanted to. Maybe I could master eyeshadow, or learn how to tell a joke without killing the punchline. The world is my oyster.

However I'm not going back to skiing. Maybe I'm a bit more confident now, but I'm not insane.