Taking risks

"Courage means feeling the fear and doing it anyway."

One of the major themes that keeps showing up in material about personal development and increasing creativity is the idea of risk-taking.

The possible consequences are what may hold us back: whether it's the frowns of that teacher when you colored outside the lines, or the more extreme disapproval that Drew Barrymore refers to in a quote: "Originality is believing in your individuality, believing in yourself, and being willing to take risks, even though people might think you're weird for doing it."

Before she started Girl Press, Pam Nelson was a research analyst for Merrill Lynch, following metals and mining stocks. But it was not an arena that allowed full enough expression of her creative impulses, so she moved to Los Angeles to work for a small business publisher as a financial expert, and "fell in love with the publishing industry" she says.

"And I realized it was the kind of thing you could do on your own," she adds, "without coming up with a million dollars in seed money. It was just me that founded Girl Press, and it was more of a one-book idea."

That first book was "Cool Women: The Thinking Girl's Guide to the Hippest Women in History" - which was adapted for television by Debbie Allen and aired on AMC.

The next book - "Girl Boss.." - includes a foreword by actress Gillian Anderson, who wrote: "At school, I would always take on the most challenging projects, sometimes to the degree that I would lose interest before they were completed.... One project I did follow through on and which, consequently, was empowering and inspiring for me was directing a play in high school. ..

Anderson adds, "I directed it, produced it, built the sets, and designed the programs on my father's computer. It was so much fun, and the experience awakened me to the knowledge that I could do anything I set my mind to. I believe this of everyone. I believe from the bottom of my heart that there is nothing we as human beings, and especially we as women, cannot tackle.

"It is not a matter of being fearless... it's about moving forward regardless of the fear. Courage means feeling the fear and doing it anyway."

Nelson notes developing the book was a process of personal discovery: "The joke about this book was that all these concepts we were trying to relate to girls are actually things we're still learning ourselves.

One of the most important things that we tried to communicate is that girls have to learn to do what they love. That's a cliche they hear all the time, but it's something that so many girls don't understand."

Nelson says she has not used any particular strategies like journal writing to develop her creative talents, but has found it crucial to trust her own instincts: "That has been the most important lesso
I've learned from all of this. Because I'm really doing something that is completely new to me, so I found that I was very uncertain, maybe overly modest in many situations, because I don't have a publishing background.

"But I knew what I liked, and what people I knew were responding to. And at some point, you have to go with that. That's something we tried to tell girls, too: Just go with your gut. Then if you make mistakes, at least it's your mistake."

Publishing continues to fuel her passions: "Every book is something that I get so excited about, which is absolutely thrilling: to have a job which is something I really love. For the first time. And working with people who I'm really excited to be around, who I like, and who I consider my friends. Which after being on Wall Street, is quite a revelation."

Thinking about her transition away from that earlier life and career, she says "We all have balances that we have to strike. I didn't have a lot of money; I had to use credit cards to make this happen. But on the other hand, I've built a career path that is a safety net in its own way, because I know that if everything falls apart, I can go back to Wall Street.

"But if I have to leave one idea behind in all the speaking engagements I do, it's to take a risk. Every time when women ask me 'How did you do this? What was your first step?' and I look at them and say 'Well, first, I quit my job' -- they look at you like you're crazy!

"They say, Oh I couldn't do that. But really, you've got to scare yourself, if you're going to make it happen. As someone said to me the other day, If you have something to fall back on, you will. So just take the leap."