Reassurance is a nice-to-have but it certainly can't be a requirement, especially when striving to do original work.  

Originality doesn't come with a sherpa nor a well-traveled path up the mountain. That's not part of the deal. You are the sherpa. And, it's your responsibility to get your ass up the mountain and back down again in one piece.

Reassurance is only available when you're doing something that has already been done before. Originality requires something else entirely. Originality requires conviction. Not so much conviction that the original work you are after will succeed––more times than not, it won't––but conviction that you're on the right path because it's your path.

The Bhagavad Gita sums up this relationship between conviction and originality beautifully, "It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else's perfectly."