Huzzah for having the courage to ask for advice! It is the best way to learn new things after all.

I would say pick a dish and make it a few times, experiminting with different ways to do it, until you feel confident enough at it to serve it to some friends. That is a big boost as they chomp it up hungrily and say what a great cook you are. Then you can boldly sally forth to try out a new dish.

I usually start with a published recipe, just to get the idea of it, and then tweak it until I feel I've got something nice and a little bit original. There are some of my intresting recipe ideas here:

http://keithlard.livejournal.com/tag/recipes