On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift up.

Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

Hey, you're listening to Creative Pep Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey.

I'm Annie J. Pizza, New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, and I will be your guide on this creative expedition. Let's go.

Do you ever worry that your work is just white noise? There's so much stuff out there, man. How can you stop the scroll as they say?

Can you get people to actually pay attention to the work that you're making, or is it just like, eh, eh, eh, eh.

You know, and they don't even pause for a second. Let alone feel anything.

If that is a problem that you're facing, you just can't get people's attention, and even when you do, you can't get them to feel anything more than just a little.

It's kind of cool. Like, if you want to go deeper with your work, you need some methods on how to do that consistently.

And if you stick around for the end of this episode, I'm going to give you five specific tactics to add juicy flavor to your creative work to make people really feel something.

Alright, let's get into it.

So if you are a new listener of the show, you might not have ever heard this. It's been a minute since I told this story.

If you're a longtime listener, I have a different point I want to make with an old story. I'm not going to do the whole thing. I'm just going to go quick on it.

It's a classic. It's actually the story that got me into telling stories back in the day I did a talk before I ever did the show where I told a story about running to a tower.

So one of the dumbest things that I ever did, but you know, that's a great thing about being a storyteller or an artist or a comedian or whatever you are a musician.

When bad things happen, you can do this kind of reverse, you know, kind of they do in jujitsu or use their strength against them.

When bad things happen, you can be sadistic and be like, this is going to be great material.

And so it was one of the dumbest things I ever did, but I've been milking it for a long time now, but it's the idea.

Then England and hills of Yorkshire, and that's when I started running very slowly just as I do today.

A little bit slower than I do today, but I'm still a slow runner and just do it for my mental health mainly and a little bit for the body.

Anyway, that's when I learned that I could run more than a mile, more than a couple miles if I did it real slow.

And one day I got on a run and I see this giant tower in the distance.

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