508 - The Real Magic of Finding Your Creative Voice with Brian Selznick

Summary

Creative Pep Talk Episode 508: The Real Magic of Finding Your Creative Voice with Brian Selznick

Release Date: June 4, 2025

In Episode 508 of Creative Pep Talk, host Andy J. Pizza engages in a profound conversation with Caldecott Winner and celebrated author/imaginator Brian Selznick. This episode delves deep into Brian’s creative journey, exploring how he developed his unique creative voice, the interplay of magic and realism in his storytelling, and the structural innovations that distinguish his works.

1. Introduction to Brian Selznick’s Journey [00:20 - 04:22]

Andy introduces Brian Selznick, highlighting his acclaimed works such as The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck, and his latest YA illustrated novel, Run Away with Me. Andy expresses admiration for Brian's ability to blend strong creative voices with engaging narratives, setting the stage for an insightful discussion on cultivating a distinctive creative practice.

Notable Quote:

Brian Selznick: "Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk." [00:11]

2. Brian Selznick’s Early Career and First Book [04:22 - 07:14]

The conversation begins with Brian recounting his foray into children’s literature, starting with his first book, The Houdini Box (1991). He shares the challenges of publishing his initial work, including his bold decision to maintain a 48-page format against an editor’s insistence on a shorter length. This period marked a significant step in establishing his creative independence.

Notable Quote:

Brian Selznick: "I had a very clear idea that this needed to be a 48-page book." [06:25]

3. Developing a Unique Creative Voice [07:14 - 13:22]

Brian reflects on the evolution of his creative voice, particularly in the context of his personal experiences as a queer individual during the early 1990s. He discusses the subtle incorporation of queer themes in his work and the broader landscape of LGBTQ+ representation in literature at the time.

Notable Quotes:

Brian Selznick: "The idea that all of my work is queer, even when there isn't anything specifically queer, just simply because it's mine." [09:29]

Brian Selznick: "David Levithan points out that given the number of books and the size of the community, we are not actually going away." [13:04]

4. The Role of Coincidences and Magic in Storytelling [14:30 - 25:17]

A significant portion of the discussion centers on how Brian integrates coincidences and a sense of magic into his narratives without resorting to overt fantasy elements. Drawing parallels with cinematic techniques and literary influences like Maurice Sendak and Edward Gorey, Brian explains his preference for maintaining realism infused with magical undertones.

Notable Quotes:

Brian Selznick: "Coincidences help me figure out what I'm doing; they feel like markers pointing me in the right direction." [18:34]

Brian Selznick: "It's a matter of figuring out what the story is because I also don't know what the story is." [20:09]

5. Structural Innovations and Breaking Forms [38:42 - 54:16]

Brian delves into his experimental approaches to book structures, particularly in works like The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck. He discusses his inspiration from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and how he uses illustrations to advance the narrative. This section highlights Brian’s belief in "illustration as writing with pictures," emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between text and imagery.

Notable Quotes:

Brian Selznick: "Illustration is writing with pictures." [46:48]

Brian Selznick: "When I went to write Hugo, I took out all the language I thought I could describe with pictures." [41:08]

6. Influences and Evolution of Style [54:16 - 57:36]

Discussing his influences, Brian pays homage to Remy Charlip and the impact of avant-garde and experimental storytelling on his work. He shares insights from Charlip’s essay, "The Page is a Door," underscoring the limitless possibilities that each page of a book holds.

Notable Quotes:

Brian Selznick: "Remy Charlip is an extraordinary and experimental maker of children's books." [53:27]

Brian Selznick: "A page is a door... all of the extraordinary things that can happen within a book." [53:59]

7. Exploring 'Run Away with Me' [56:38 - 61:03]

Brian provides an overview of his latest book, Run Away with Me, a story about two 16-year-old boys falling in love in Rome amidst the backdrop of the 1986 pandemic. Inspired by his own experiences in Rome during the pandemic, Brian intertwines historical elements with a personal narrative to emphasize the resilience and enduring presence of the queer community.

Notable Quotes:

Brian Selznick: "It’s about two 16-year-old boys who fall in love in Rome in 1986." [56:38]

Brian Selznick: "Knowledge of our history, especially now, gives us a sense of stability." [56:57]

8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts [61:03 - 66:20]

Wrapping up, Andy and Brian reflect on the enduring impact of storytelling and the importance of maintaining a balance between creative discipline and the fluidity of inspiration. Brian emphasizes the significance of acknowledging and participating in a larger creative lineage, inspiring listeners to view their work as part of an ongoing cultural narrative.

Notable Quote:

Brian Selznick: "You can't erase us. People have tried before; they fail." [56:57]

Key Takeaways

• Balancing Creativity and Discipline: Brian underscores the importance of consistency in creative practice without stifling originality.

• Integration of Magic and Realism: His work exemplifies how subtle magical elements can enhance realistic narratives, creating a captivating blend that resonates with readers.

• Structural Innovation: By experimenting with book structures, Brian demonstrates the potential of illustrations to serve as narrative drivers, pushing the boundaries of traditional storytelling.

• Cultural and Personal Influences: Personal experiences and cultural history deeply inform Brian’s storytelling, providing depth and authenticity to his characters and plots.

• Resilience through Storytelling: The discussion highlights how storytelling can serve as a source of strength and stability, especially within marginalized communities.

Final Thoughts

Episode 508 offers a rich exploration of Brian Selznick’s creative ethos, providing invaluable insights for aspiring creatives seeking to find and refine their unique voices. Through his experiences and thoughtful reflections, Brian illustrates the profound impact that disciplined creativity and authentic storytelling can have on both the creator and the audience.

Transcript

[Andy J. Pizza]

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

[Brian Selznick]

Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

[Caldecott Winner]

Is it just me or did you get serious about making stuff? Partially because. Because you loved creative work that just had a really strong sense of creative voice. Like, that was a huge driver for me. I just became so obsessed with that feeling that you get when you encounter art that feels like meeting a person on a deeper level than you can feel when you meet someone just face to face. Like, I wanted to figure out how to do that. If you want to figure out how to do that, today is a good day for you. Because today on the show we have someone who I think has an incredibly powerful sense of creative voice, and it's Caldecott winning author and illustrator Brian Selznick. You might know Brian Selznick's work from books like the Invention of Hugo Cabret, which became the movie Hugo, or some of his other books like Wonderstruck, the Marvels, Kaleidoscope, and many, many more. It's a complete honor to get to speak to Brian as a big fan of his work. And on today's episode we discuss his new book and we kind of use it as a specimen to explore who he is as an artist, how he developed this very unique and authentic way of working that also continues to grow throughout his creative journey. His new book, Run Away with Me is a YA illustrated novel.

[Brian Selznick]

And.

[Caldecott Winner]

And it's about two teenage boys falling in love in Rome. And I love the book and I think this conversation has so many different takeaways for people that want to develop their creative voice or get a stronger sense of that in their work because this is just someone who I think is a complete master in that area. Stick around to the end for our creative call to adventure inspired by this chat. It's called Timepiece and it's a prompt that can help you see your connection to your creative heroes as well as take the pressure off needing to compete with them. So stick around for that. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I love Squarespace.

[Brian Selznick]

I'm a long time user.

[Caldecott Winner]

One of the things I love about Squarespace is I will use. It's so easy to use that I will use it to create pitches.

[Brian Selznick]

If I'm pitching a book or I'm pitching something to a client, I will.

[Caldecott Winner]

Use a Squarespace page in my website and. And I'll build the whole thing there. Then you don't have these clunky like document PDFs clogging up people's inboxes and it looks super slick. If you want to see one of.

[Brian Selznick]

Those that I use all the time.

[Caldecott Winner]

I did one for my series right side out.

[Brian Selznick]

Andyjpizza.com RSO and you can see how.

[Caldecott Winner]

I create a little pitch summary of that project. Go to squarespace.com pep talk gets get building for free and trying it out and testing it. And then when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk all one word for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace.

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[Brian Selznick]

First of all, we could just start with People might know you from Wonderstruck or Hugo Cabret, but you've been publishing books. I think I read your first book was in 1991, is that correct?

Yes. The Houdini box.

Yeah. And it's there's also like a through line. From what I can tell, this was a picture book, right?

It was a 48 page picture book. Yes.

Yeah.

Unusually long picture book.

Can you tell us just a little bit about that book?

Yeah, it started off as a project. I did it in college. I went to risd very much Rhode Island School of Design, not wanting to be a child children's book illustrator. And so I avoided taking any classes with the teachers there like Christopher Nahlsberg and David McCauley. But I did have a sculpture class my freshman year and we had to do something about the magician Houdini and I made a three dimensional image of Houdini on stage with Plexiglas and I just wrote a story to go along with it because I like writing stories. And it wasn't until after I graduated college that I decided to to get into children's books. And then I remembered that story I wrote. And even though it wasn't written for kids, it was about a 10 year old boy who was obsessed with Houdini like I was when I was a kid. So I took that, rewrote it, made it a bit longer, did about eight sample illustrations all with Bic pen and Xeroxed everything. This was, you know, way before People were using the Internet the way we use it now, way before social media. So I got a book from the library called Children's Book Publishing with the addresses and names of editors and publishers. Yeah, I xeroxed everything I had made. I put them in report covers like in high school and wrote a letter saying, hi, I would like to illustrate books. Here's a sample of something I can, you know, that. Of what my work is like, of what I can do. And eventually the story ended up in the hands of Anne Schwartz at Random House at Knopf and she published it. I had originally been contacted by an editor named Arthur Levine, who many years later went on to publish the Harry Potter books. But he wanted me to turn this into a 32 page picture book. And even though I was unpublished and living in my parents house after college with no money, had a very clear idea that this needed to be a 48 page book. I explained to him why and he said that he wouldn't publish it unless it was 32 pages. So I turned him down. I said no to him. Looking back that I realized how gutsy that was. But Anne Schwartz eventually said yes and yeah. And the book came out in 1991 while I was still working at a children's bookstore in New York City called Eeyore's Books for Children.

That, that's great. And I want to get to later talking about format because that seems important to you and you've done so many interesting things with that. But first I wanted to ask, like, could the 1991. You see a path leading to this book that you just made or would this have surprised you?

This would have shocked me. Like there was, there was so much about this that would have shocked me. Yeah, I had, gosh, I was 26, I think when I, when this book was published, when the first book was published, the Houdini box. I think I had just come out to my parents or was just about to come out to my parents. I was about 26. A lot of my friends knew already I'd started coming out after like a little late in college and then after to my friends. And I was not particularly out publicly, although I wasn't seeing anybody. So it didn't really feel like I was hiding anything. Yeah, per se. But I think I was still existing within a lot of the shame and fear about being queer that I had grown up with. So trying to imagine this, this book would, would have really seemed unimaginable at the time. In fact, after I had made about four books after the Houdini box. I made books for about six years that nobody ever read, but I liked them.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I do remember a friend of mine who's a gay artist asked me if I thought that my books were queer and, or if my work was queer. And I, I thought, I thought, I said, I said no because there were no, actually no characters who were actually gay in any of my stories. But he laughed in my face and said, brian, your first book was about a kid who's obsessed with being able to escape from things like closets and.

Wow, interesting.

I got his point.

Yeah.

And, and of course, you know, everything we do is, I, I do believe is a kind of self portrait.

Sure, I agree completely.

Yeah. So the idea that all of my work is queer, even when there isn't anything specifically queer, just simply because it's mine.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

Made sense. And, and it, and it's all based on what I, you know, learned in terms of how to see the world, how to understand the world and, and the ways in which that shifted and changed over time. Yeah.

I didn't want to presume, but I was guessing, you know, publishing in 1991 was not the same landscape that we find ourselves in where you would have felt, you know, even independent of your own journey, whether you would have felt good about publishing work like this and whether it feels like. Yeah, I, I wonder if it feels.

Like.

Kind of celebratory or, you know, is it a better, is it a better future in that way than you imagined?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it also just simply wouldn't have crossed my mind.

Right.

That I write about, I write about the characters who come to me and generally over the past 35 years, the characters who have arrived in my imagination are around 10 to 13 years old.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And this was the first time I even thought of a story about 16 year old people. So it just simply wasn't anything that was on my mind in my landscape on the landscape on the horizon. And I was very aware of books with queer content. In 1990, I believe, Francesca Leah Block published Weetsy Bat, which I discovered in 1991 when I was actually. Maybe she published it in 89, but in the early 90s, I discovered it when I was working at Eeyore's Books for Children and it was published as a young adult book. And as a 24, 5 year old, I thought I was beyond. I wouldn't have identified myself as the young adult reader, you know, because I think we tend to think of that more for teenagers or as teenagers. But you know, we're, you know, I was a young adult and that book, which had queer characters whose lives were just a part of the story and it talked about AIDS without ever mentioning aids because we all knew what AIDS was at the time. It was the height of the AIDS crisis and it was set in Los Angeles with a somewhat magical fairy tale point of view. Although nothing magical happens, it feels magical, which has remained very interesting to me. And, and, and that book was very important to me, but it was definitely one of the few books that were published with out gay proud characters in it.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I'm very good friends with David Levithan, who's also a activist and a editor. He edited, you know, the Babysitter Club books and the Hunger Games, and now he is editing my work. And you know, when he published his first young adult queer novel, Boy meets Boy, about 20 years ago, he said that he was one of about eight authors who were publishing books and a very, very small number of books were being published. And now it seems as if dozens and dozens of books with queer topics are coming out all the time.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And despite the enormity of the censorship and all of the issues that we are facing.

Yeah.

David Levithan, who's one of the founders of Authors Against Book Banning, which is a really great organization that you can look up and find, you know, know, really great help in terms of how to fight what's going on, points out that given the number of books and given the size of the community that has been created over the past 20 years, that you can make our lives worse. You can try to censor us, but we are not actually going away.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And, and that is very different than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And so the, the, the size of the fight is worse. It is, it is bigger, but the size of the supporting team is also exponentially larger.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I think that's true.

[Brian Selznick]

I want to go back a little bit.

[Caldecott Winner]

I'd like to hear, if you could.

[Brian Selznick]

Just kind of tell people what the book is about. And I'd also like to hear a little bit about the thing you sped by, which was this thing that not magic or is magic or feels magic, but nothing magical happens. I think that's really interesting. As a kids bookmaker myself, I think about magical realism versus fantasy. And a lot of my books are actually kind of trying to capture the magic of life because I actually for the longest time as a kid was very obsessed with like only fantasy because I found our world boring. And so it was over time that I learned to see all the magic of life. So if you could just like, maybe talk a little bit about what that means to you and then also tell us a little bit about the book.

Yeah. I'll start with the question about magic, because it is interesting and something that's always on my mind.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I also, as a kid, mostly read fantasy and some science fiction and lots of horror. I love Stephen King. I love Peter Straub. Ghost Story was one of my favorite books when I was young. And when I wrote, even though I didn't consider myself a writer, I wrote stories about underwater cities and horses with wings and horns and children who could fly things, things like that.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I was obsessed with Houdini as a. As a young person. And a lot of people ascribed magical abilities onto Houdini because he was also very interested in the afterlife and in spiritualism, and he was a famous debunker of fake spiritualists. But a lot of people, including myself, believe that the reason he was so adamant about debunking spiritualism was because he believed in it and wanted to find someone who was really doing it so that he could contact people he lost, especially his. His mother. Although he never did find anyone who actually.

That's really interesting.

Yeah. But, you know, to whom he could. You know, who. Who he trusted.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

He debunked everybody.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Wow.

[Brian Selznick]

That's very interesting story.

Yes. And he always said I. What I. What I can do, anybody can do. It's just I'm the only one who knows how. Like, I'm the one who has the secrets. And so as. As. So my first book, as we were talking about the Houdini Box, is about a kid who's obsessed with Houdini and the idea that Houdini could escape from anything. And I think part of why Houdini is someone who we still talk about, who's still a metaphor that we all understand, is because he wasn't just doing magic tricks. He was tapping into something very human or we all feel trapped by something. You don't have to be a young queer person to feel like a man who can escape from anything is a metaphor that you want to be a part of. We all have things we want to escape from that we feel like we can't. And he's saying, you know, in. In a metaphoric fashion, you can.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And. And it really wasn't. And I did write, you know, my second book was called the Robot King, which is about two children who build a robot out of scraps from around their house, and they put their mother's music box inside for its heart, and it comes to life. And that has a kind of sci fi, magical realism element to the story. But generally I found myself more interested in stories that leaned more realistic and. And ultimately, when it was time to start writing the Invention of Hugo Cabret, I remember very consciously reading a book. I won't name what it was, but the premise was incredibly enchanting. It was set in the real world, in a real city that I really loved. And it really felt magical the way in which the characters played out within this real city. And then about halfway through the book, actual magic is introduced for the first time and the whole feeling of magic fell apart for me. And I remember thinking that when I write the story that eventually became the Invention of Hugo Cabret, that I wanted to maintain a sense of magic, a feeling that anything is possible, but that it all happens within the real world with things that are capable of happening and that. And it involves several coincidences. And, you know, coincidences are, you know, can be controversial to talk about within fiction because you, as the author, are making them happen. So they can.

This is one of my questions, actually, but. Well, yes, keep going. Sorry.

Yeah. Except in real life, I experience extraordinary qu. Coincidences, as do many of us, all the time.

[Co-host]

Yes.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And they often happen, usually happen when I'm working on a book and they help me not just. Not only do they actually help me figure out what I'm doing, but they feel like markers on a map that are pointing me in the right direction or that indicate I'm going in the right direction.

Yeah, I. This is. We'll just go there real quick and then we'll. We'll, you know, circle back because this is one of the questions I had was synchronicity or coincidences are a common theme for you. And I think it's one of the things that is so interesting about your book, your books is that there, you know, you even have people out there like Pixar. One of their rules is like, only coincidences that hurt the characters can be included. That's the only ones they'll allow. And I thought, yeah, your books are really interesting. Contradiction to that in a way that feels magical in a. That feels like real life. And, And I don't know anybody that if they, you know, it's the biggest skeptic. If they have a big enough coincidence, it. They're going to at least pause. Even if they're going to write it off to probability or whatever. They. They are one of the things that make meaning for us as we move through life. And I think you do a really good job of using that as a tool in a way that you don't see very much. And I. I'm glad you brought it up because I wondered how. How intentional that was, or what you think, what does it do for the story or for the reader?

I mean, for me, it's just realism.

Yeah.

And so.

Yeah.

So it's. It's a matter of figuring out what the. The story is because I also don't know what the story is. When I begin a project, I have a sense of a character and an age and a place, and I have a couple. I often have a couple of moments within a story. But. But the. The three to five years that it often takes me to make a book are. Are taken up mostly by trying to simply figure out what happens in the plot.

Right.

And. And so the coincidences that happen happen because I feel like they need to happen for the characters at this time or that time. And, yeah, I remember someone once said, and like another. Maybe it was a version of the Pixar rule, but it was like, coincidences can get a character into a plot, but they can't get a character out of a plot. You know, plot problem.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And, you know, that's interesting that. That makes sense. But. But I. I'm very touchy with anything that paints itself as a rule because that immediately makes me feel like, well, then you, like, then break it. Like you can break it.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And. Yeah, you know, like you don't want to do certain things all the time and you don't want to. But I, you know, but I feel like anything. Anything can work if it works for that particular story with that particular character, with that particular set of circumstances which will never have been written about before because you're making them up, even if you're using elements or tropes or whatever the word is from the whole history of literature that comes before you, because we're all writing, you know, in a certain moment in time with a certain history of work behind us, and. And we're trying to figure out how to tell our own stories and thinking about the ways in which. I'm interested in the ways in which the stories from the past can help us figure out what, you know, what it is that we're. What. What we're doing. So I don't. I don't have. I don't have any rules about anything.

Yeah.

It's just that I. I'm not Afraid of things like coincidences. I don't, I don't set out to avoid anything. If I notice that it seems unrealistic within the world I'm creating. You know, oh, this kid just had this happen. So it wouldn't really feel logical for this then to happen. Like, that's a. That's an instinct that exists within the story. And, And I, I then try to follow the story. But I don't know. Like, if, if. If I really needed two coincidences to happen in a row, my job would be to figure out how to make those believable.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

For this character, for this moment. And, you know, I've had a lot of experience with seeing or helping to translate my work into other media.

Yeah.

Books to movies, books to theater. And I have noticed that one of the things that the adapters have to deal with, even if the adapter is me, is. Is how to handle the coincidences that in a book might feel normal or natural or believable, where on stage or on film, where things have to unfold in a different way, they then might feel unrealistic.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

So, you know, if I, if there's three coincidences in the book when, When I'm adapting or when it's being adapted, there may in fact only need. There may only be room for one.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Brian Selznick]

And. But, but, but, you know, so much about adaptation. From adaptation from book to another medium is about whittling down and, and, and cutting. But that, but that. But maybe, but maybe for me it's more about not having any preconceived notion about what something should be.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

It's. It's. What does this story need? And then trying to allow space for that to happen to.

Do you have a sensitivity to coincidences in your life more than other people? Potentially.

I don't think it's more or less than other people. All I. Because I don't know everybody.

Sure.

But like, all I can say, I've met a bunch of people. They're very interesting. But in general, I am very aware that I have these major coincidences happen. And they're. They. They sometimes make me feel like even though I don't believe in a kind of omnipotent God, sure. It makes me feel like I understand why people do.

Right.

Because it's weird. Like there are weird big things that happen and the idea that someone. Something is making that happen for you is pleasing. Like, that's a really pleasing idea. But. But if I don't believe in God, I do like the idea that something makes there is something that makes sense of the universe. Einstein talked about this, you know, sort of bigger idea that everything makes sense. It's just that we can't understand it because we're just who we are.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And so that, you know, that's interesting to me. And I'm, and I'm. I'm also fine living in a mystery. I also don't need answers to everything that I find the mystery really pleasing and exciting. And I think I also want to give that to my characters a little bit so that my characters can offer it to the reader. Where sometimes just living in the unknown is okay. And my plots tend to be mysteries where I. The character in the beginning doesn't know something. They want to know something. They eventually meet someone who knows everything, and then that person tells them a really big story. I didn't do this on purpose, but I have noticed that this is a structure that my stories sometimes follow.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

But. But each time I get there in a different way. The characters are different. The stories that being. That are being told are different. And that is fine. Right. Like, like, because they're, they're, they're, they're my stories. Like, you know, Salman Rushdie wrote a book called Haroun and the Sea of Stories with the idea that all, all stories in the universe exist in the same place. And we draw from that sea.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I guess they become interpreted through us, but they all belong to the sea. And I, I, I like that idea. I think that's a very poetic idea. But I, I'm open to. I, I like. Or I guess what I should say is I like the idea that I have a certain set of things that interest me. And I'm not afraid if another secret room appears in my story or a fire or an older person who has a secret or any of the elements that have appeared in different forms in previous books of mine. If they reappear. It. It may. It's more that it makes me curious about why it's back.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And what aspect of it I need to explore. Because, you know, I am. I am conscious of making each of my books different from the last one. So it's not. I'm not. I don't feel like I'm rewriting the same story.

Yeah.

But I, But I'm you. But I am using elements, and there are elements that I follow when they reappear.

And I, you know, I really appreciate that. I actually think most of my favorite creative people have these threads that run through things. And almost like you can see pieces of Ideas build just kind of similar to the way that you talked about your early picture books and the robot and the magic and all that. I think that's. I don't know. I always kind of encourage creative people to not be afraid of those things, first of all, because most people won't see most of your work. That's one. One element. And then the people that are die hard and go back, they're just going to get a kick out of it. You know, they like following the breadcrumbs. One thing that occurred to me as you were talking through that was that, you know, regardless of maybe spirituality, the synchronicities or these coincidences, maybe our sensitivity is heightened when we're trying to do courageous things. And you talking about them showing up when you're creating and writing, that's something that can be an insecure place or a courageous place. And then also people like in this book that are having relationships that they know are secret and could have real consequences. And I wonder if there's a. There's almost a feeling of, oh, that this all coming together and these other relationships and history mirroring this and constantly getting this affirmation is really essential to doing things that are scary. And that feels true to me in my real life is whenever I'm making a big transition or move or something of that nature, I feel like my sensitivity to coincidences goes up because it's almost the only green flag that we have or sign that we have. I'd never really thought of it that way until he said that.

Yeah, I think life is chaos. As you're moving through it, things don't make sense, things happen that you can't control. It's chaos. But when you get through it and you look back, you can make a narrative out of it. You can make a story, oh, I got to do this, because I didn't get to do that thing I was really sad about. And I thought everything was over and the doors had closed. But it turned out, you know, it's. It. It. You know, there's a reason cliches are cliches. And the idea of a door closing means a window opening. You know, like, there's versions of that idea that we have thought about. But I think it's because, you know, we as human beings are designed to. Were built to tell stories. It's in our DNA, for whatever reason, for whatever theory you may have about that. But we. We make stories happen.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And. And I've been interested in the ways in which we retell our own Stories about the thing that happened to us or the things that happened to us. And. And that the way we decide to tell the story affect. Can affect how we feel about it. You can change how you tell this. Yeah. You can change how you tell the story. And it's the same story, but it. It. It can make you feel differently.

It's dramatic.

Yeah. Like, for instance, after the. When the. When people first started going out again, when the pandemic began to open, I met an artist and I asked her how she was doing, and she said, great. And I was like, who the hell says that? And I was like, what? I said, what do you mean? It was fascinating. And she said, well, you know, I have this really nice studio, and I used to go in and I would just feel bad about my work, but I walked in the other morning and the sun was coming in and it was beautiful. And I had all this work ahead of me that I could do. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I. And I just thought, like, why do I feel bad all the time? I'm going to feel good about what I do and the fact that I have a nice studio and I can come in and paint what I want. And I said to her, I'm going to do that. And I did. I actually consciously did. And I think it actually made a difference for me. So if you had asked me before that what my process was like, which a lot of people had asked me that I. I love talking about my process.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

I have told this story. I mean, I've told the story about my process publicly before, and it was always. My process is really hard. I feel bad all the time. And every now and then, I have a moment where I figure something out, where I fix a plot point, something comes into focus, and I feel great for a second, but then I dive back into despair because I don't know what happens next. And then after three years of pain and suffering, I have a book.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And then I feel good because it's finished. That was. That was my narrative.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And after the narrative. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Like, people used to come up to me and be like, thank you so much for talking about the pain. Like, that's how I feel all the time. And I was like, I know. I know. And it's only because it's real. Like, it's like, that is a real thing. But I began to notice I was living inside of that pain. And I, like, I have a nice job. I like my job. I have a nice husband. Like, my house is nice. I was like, why do I feel bad all the time? Why am I making myself feel bad all the time? There's enough things out in the world that know to feel bad about. Like, I don't also have to make myself feel bad about my. About myself. So. So the story I then told myself and that I now talk about is my process is I have these great moments where I have a moment of inspiration. I figure something out, and it, it feels incredible.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

As, as the story comes together. But those moments often have long periods of pain between them.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And they often have long periods of frustration between them. But at the end, I, I know that I can. I should keep going because I, I'm curious what's going to happen in this story. It's not that I've had. It's not that I've figured things out in the past that never really actually seems to help you with the current story. Like having figured something out before doesn't mean you're going to figure this one out.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And, but, but I'm curious about why I'm thinking about it so much. I'm curious about what, what's going to happen. And then I keep working and eventually the, the book is finished and I feel good. And, and so it's the same story. It's not denying the pain. It's not denying the, the difficulty. But I have found that by telling it, the story from that point of view, I feel less bad all the time. So that when I do get into those periods of being stuck and feeling bad, I can think to myself, oh, this is part of my process. Sometimes there is just time. And I also am working on more than one thing at a time. I'm also, I'm often working on a drawing for one thing or an adaptation of one thing, you know, for a different medium at the same time. So I have something I can turn to when I'm stuck in the story. And if I don't, I can take a break or I can go to a museum or I can, you know, or sometimes I'll. I will just sit and try to figure out the next thing. Right. It's. It's not like I'm only writing when I suddenly feel inspired. Sometimes you do have to force yourself into it with an open notebook and a pencil. I find that getting bigger thoughts are. Is easier with pen and paper or pencil and paper and then going into it in more detail. I transfer everything over to the computer, but I generally start or do big changes with pencil and paper. And usually it's like first, it's usually present tense lists like the boy goes over here, he does this, she does that.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

In order to figure out the changes. But again, it's telling the story from your own story, from a different point of view that I think can help. And then that can translate to other stories or it has translated to other stories. I would tell about myself and realizing that some stories aren't actually that fun to tell anymore and so I don't need to tell them. And other stories I can figure out ways to tell them that don't then plunge me back into the pain of the story. If it is a painful story. Sometimes it's helpful to think of myself being like a reporter, you know, reporting a story as opposed to feeling it. Because I think a lot of times when we rest, when we retell our stories, we can also be living them again.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And that I don't always want to do for myself.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

But, but creatively it, it has helped me feel less terrible all the time. And I appreciative of that.

You know, I, I love that. I also, I really appreciate you, you know, as you were setting it up, I think subconsciously I'm thinking, oh, this is going to be a dramatic shift from this super negative story to all positive story. It's really great that you highlight like, no, the pieces are there. It's just different emphasis, different arc. And it reminds me of one thing that was a breakthrough for me because when I got into the storytelling side of it, I had that same experience where I'd have these euphoric moments of like, oh, the metaphor clicked or you know, whatever it is. And for a while I felt kind of bad about it because I was like, I know there's so much pain associated with this. Am I doing like the wrong thing? Am I just not good at that? But then I really like when that moment happens. And I reframed that as well. I think it must be like if you loved wrestling, if you loved wrestling.

[Caldecott Winner]

You know, part of what you like.

[Brian Selznick]

About it is the pain. Like that's part of this, you know, sport that you're doing. And this creative sport that I do, a big part of it is kind of hurts.

Right.

And so I, I love what you said about that.

[Andy J. Pizza]

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[Brian Selznick]

I want to talk about critique and breaking the form, which I'm sure you've been asked a million times, but I think I want to tackle this hopefully a little bit differently because when I think of your work, that's one of the first things I think of is this a really different, these are really different types of books. And I love what you said earlier. I talked, I think a lot about creative stuff as there's this great bit of George Steiner talking about how this fake utopia where there's no critics and the only critics that exist are people that make their own version of something. So if you didn't like it, you remake it and change what you didn't like. And I, and I. And then he makes an argument for saying like, the great works of fiction are a critique of the previous work of fiction. I love when you were talking about your, your taste and sensitivity of moving through this book, loving this book until the magic actually comes into the book and being like, I'm going to do one where that never happens. I really, I love that. I think that that's such a good takeaway for people to be able to see that critique and that criticism as a creative prompt. But in that line of thinking, your books are really interesting because they break the form in this really interesting way that I don't have great comparisons to and that they're highly illustrate and lots of pros. And so I think a lot of people are going to think, oh, these things are just really contrarian to the form. But then when you read them, they also feel very classic. And so I'm wondering if how do you move through that in terms of how do I, how do you know where to? Because like you said, you have these structures that reappear and there's some really classic storytelling things going on. How do you move through? When is it time to break rules? When is it time to, you know, just play by the rules? Do you think about that?

Yeah, and it just, it just has to do with the story. Yeah, it's only what does the story demand? And so when I began the invention of Hugo Cabret, it was supposed to be, it was a 98 page Nolla with one drawing per chapter. That's what my original contract said.

Okay.

And it opened with a three page written description of the train station. And I had a sense that each of the drawings that would accompany the chapters would be. Have some kind of purpose, although I didn't know what they were yet. But I was just writing the story. But after about a year of writing the narrative and not being able to figure out what each of those drawings, the one drawing per chapter, would be, I began to reassess about thinking about what the pictures could do. And somehow I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I found myself thinking about where the Wild Things Are. I guess maybe because I think about it all the time, but Maurice Sendak's great masterpiece. And if you go back and you look at the structure of that book, of course it's mostly white space in the beginning with a little rectangle of a drawing. And it says, on the night Max wore his wolf suit, he made one kind of mischief. And then you turn the page and another and the picture gets a little bit bigger. And every time you turn the page, the pictures get bigger and bigger until by the time you get to the wild rumpus, this, there's no more white space, there's no more words, and it's just six pages of moving through these full page bleed illustrations. So you're moving the narrative forward and then you come back to text after that. And I was thinking about cinema because the story was about George Melz, who made the first silent, you know, who made the first science fiction movie, was one of the pioneers of silent film. So I was watching a lot of movies looking at films that, that were made in France in the 1930s when the story took place. And it just somehow eventually made the connection that I could possibly tell part of the narrative with pictures the way that I'm telling the narrative with words. So I went back and I took out all of the language that I thought I could describe with pictures.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

So every, everything that was actually literally a description I took out. Everything that was movement, I took out because I could show a character on one page doing one thing and then on another page doing the next thing so I could imply movement, I took out, yeah, everything that I felt I could draw, which meant I had to leave in dialogue because I knew I didn't want to do speech bubbles like a graphic novel or a comic. I had to leave in sounds, I had to leave in smells, and I had to leave in some thoughts. But I was also able to take out almost a lot of emotion because I could show it on the characters faces. So the three page description of the train station that I wrote, which I thought was very nicely written, which involved setting us in Paris, introducing this boy moving through the train station became, I believe, 30 pages, 30 drawings, which is 60 pages. I can't remember exactly how long it was now, but where we see the moon over Paris, then we turn the page and we see closer to Paris and then we see the train station, then we see a boy, then we go into the train station with the boy and we follow him through the crowd and we get to the metal grate that he climbs through. And so it went from being three pages to being, you know, like whatever it is, 60 pages. And I. And. And then it also meant that the pictures were appearing randomly throughout the story. So sometimes there was six pages of text between two drawings and sometimes there was one sentence. So I had to then have a lot of white space between, you know, on, on the, on the text pages. And that's just, that's just technical because I. That's all the words I wanted between the picture sequences. And then when I finished Hugo, and it hadn't been published yet, and I didn't know if anybody was going to read it, I was aware that I learned a lot of things making the book. So I wanted to take what I learned and then do something new with it for my next book. So I actually started the book that became Wonderstruck before Hugo was actually published. And my idea for the second book was a structural idea before I had a narrative. So it was the opposite of Hugo. My idea for Wonderstruck was to try to tell two stories, one in words and one in pictures, have them weave back and forth and then eventually come together. And I coincidentally came upon a documentary about the history of deaf culture where they talked about how deaf people are the people of the eye, because they experience most of the world visually when they can't hear. Because. Because they can't hear. Sign language is a visual language. And I thought I could tell the story of a deaf person entirely in pictures because that would parallel the way they experience the world. And then the marvels became an experiment in memory, where the first half of the book is entirely illustrated. 600 or, I don't know, whatever, 300 pages of pictures and then that story becomes a memory for the characters who seem unrelated in the second half of the story. Until you. Which is told all in text. Yeah, so, so the create. It's not even like the breaking of a structure. It's more the creation of a structure is happening because I know what the story is that I'm telling.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And that has, yeah, that's always been what's guided me.

You're trying to find the most effective way to tell that story and you. Yeah, yeah, I, I am super inspired by that. I have. My best selling book is called Invisible Things and so I think a lot about what you can show in pictures and I, my favorite definition of illustration is writing with pictures. And I love what you describe because I, when I say that often I feel like people give me a blank look, like they don't know what I mean. And I'm like, well, you can take a, A, you know, a bunch of text that tells you everything about this scene and all of that stuff and then show a picture and then you've just written that with a picture. And that's what illustrators, I think do. And so I love this idea of all. And you know, the categories and invisible things are feelings and sounds and smells and they're all these, it's kind of a flip of that. But I, I, when you went to go write the, this notion that you could take out all this text and that the, the pictures and the text would be telling essential parts of the story, but different parts. Was that something that you intuited or is it something that you learned? Like I've, I've heard illustrators talk about this and that being kind of the purpose of having, you know, you know, as you're editing a picture book, that's something an editor is going to talk to you about or has talked to me about of like, you don't need to say this. Could you show this or was this something that you learned in school or how did you come upon that?

Yeah, it was, I guess it was intuited.

Yeah.

I, I had become friends with Maurice Sendak right before I started working on Hugo and it was actually my conversations with him that in many ways led to the making, the invention of Hugo Cabret and talking about why, why, you know, a lot of things that Maurice is, Maurice Sendak has talked about publicly.

Sure.

Which is, you know, why you use pictures. The difference between illustrating and illuminating. That's what he was interested in, was illuminating a story. So yeah, you're actually, you know, you're Creating a third thing. So there's the pictures, there's the words, and then there's the thing that is created by the combination of the pictures and the words. And that's interesting to me. I've been very, very inspired by the work of Edward Gorey.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

Who's. Where. The gap between what you see and what you read is often extremely wide, and you are left as the reader to fill in that giant gap. And what is created in your mind is horrifying and hilarious and shock and often shocking. But you're. He very rarely draws things that are actually shocking.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Brian Selznick]

He's. He's drawing the thing that leads up to the shocking moment. He's leading the aftermath of the shocking moment, and you. And he'll indicate the shocking moment in text, perhaps. Especially if, you know, sort of the supreme example of this is the Ghastly Crumb Tinies where he kills 26 children.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And, you know, and you're generally seeing them right before they ingest the ink or are eaten by the bear or fall through, you know, or sometimes just after. You know, I think. I think maybe we've seen the person just after they've fallen through the ice. But what's being done is forcing you to become complicit in the storytelling. In the murder. You know, you're the one picturing it.

Yeah.

You know. You know, he didn't draw it.

Yeah.

You know, you have to do that. And, you know, it's sort of like, you know, famously, Steven Spielberg had trouble with the mechanical shark when he was making Jaws. And you. And you were supposed to see that shark from the first shot of the movie, but because they were having trouble with the shark, he was forced to find creative ways to imply the shark.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

So when we see the woman be killed by the shark in that opening, that extraordinary opening shot, we see her being pulled under. We see her being pushed through the water. We see her rising and falling and being pulled back down, and it's much, much more horrifying because we're imagining what is happening under the water.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And, yeah, I think about that a lot.

Me, too. I think about, like, some of my biggest influences are things like the Little Prince, where it's the inside the elephant or walking in my pocket, where there's characters you never see. They're like, under a rug. Brain is just like, no, what is that? It's so frightening. So, yeah, I love that. So, okay, I got to respect your time here, and I wanted to tell you, first of all. Or first of all, Last of all, hopefully I'm just getting started. I wanted to say massive thanks because I believe it's through your work that I discovered Remy Charlep, which ended up being one of my biggest influences and influenced that book, Invisible Things. So thank you for that because I. I don't know if I would have come in contact with his work otherwise. A lot of people aren't familiar with Remy Charlip, even in the kids book world. I'm kind of surprised by how little he's known in America, at least from my experience.

Yeah, he's fallen through the cracks. He was a very influential writer, dancer, theater maker, really extraordinary person and intersected with a lot of the great artists in the 50s and 60s in all different fields. And he's now most famous for a book he made called fortunately, which some people still know. But one of the things that I feel has become a mission of mine is reintroducing people to Remy Sharlip, who made all the books I most loved as a kid, including 13 and mother, mother, I feel sick. Call for the doctor. Quick, quick, quick. Book he did with Margaret Wise Brown called the Dead Bird, which. It's one of the great books for children and very young people about death. He's a extraordinary and experimental maker of children's books. He actually ended up posing as George Melies in the Invention of Hugo Cabret, because I met him right when I was working on Hugo. Yeah. And he looked just like George Melies. But he wrote an essay called the Page is a Door about all of the extraordinary things that can happen within a book. And I. If you want to read that essay, it's on my website, Brian Selznick.com There's a section about Hugo, and then in the section about Hugo, there's a section about Remy Charlotte.

I just read it and I highly recommend it. It was very inspiring to both my wife and I, who both make. We make picture books together.

[Co-host]

So.

[Brian Selznick]

Yeah. And he wrote it in the 60s before there was anything like an E reader or like the, you know, graphic novels that are designed for computers. And he envisions a lot of those things in this essay. He sort of predicts a lot of things that we. A lot of technology that we now have. But he's mostly concerned about what happens when you physically turn the page in a paper book.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And that is. Has always been a guiding light to me as well.

And I love the nonsense of arm in arm, and it's just. There's just so much play. And I highly recommend people go check that out and check out that. I'll put it in the show notes as well.

Yeah.

What is it called? Every book is a door. Is that what it's called?

A page is a door.

Page is a door. Well, that's excellent. Last thing is anything that you want to mention about the book or anything we didn't touch on. I would, I'd hate to leave that out.

Yeah, I will say that. Run away with me. I'll talk about the plot for a second. Yeah, it's about. Get to that we never actually got to is about 216 year old boys who fall in love in Rome in 1986. It was inspired by a very strange moment during the pandemic where my husband won something called the Rome prize. And they somehow got us to Rome six days after the insurrection at the height of the pandemic. And we were able to live there for nine months and we had the city to ourselves. And I got to go to the Sistine Chapel by myself. I got to go to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, all these places. Essentially we were by ourselves and. And the. And as I was walking around and talking to other Rome prize winners, my husband was writing about an Italian architect. Everybody who won the Rome prize was working on a project about Rome. And I heard about the history of the obelisks and the history of mosaics and the history of churches and excavations and sculptures. And I just kept thinking to myself that all these stories should be in a book. And I created a kind of imaginary map in my head. So when I got back to America and began to put the story together, I wanted to create a situation that would bring together all my favorite places in Rome. And even when I was there, I began to imagine these two 16 year old boys falling in love. Although I didn't know who they were. Eventually I decided one would be American, one would be Italian. And then I began to think of other queer love stories through history. One in the 1940s, one in 1900 and one in the 1600s. And it's about the way in which as queer people we often don't know we have a history. We're often born into straight families in the straight world. And sometimes it takes us a long time to discover we are part of a culture that dates back to the beginning of time. And I wanted to look at that and look at some moments from that history because when I learned that history, it gave me a sense of stability when I was feeling very destabilized. And these are particularly destabilizing times.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I Find that, that the knowledge of this history, especially when we are currently being faced with an administration that is actively trying to erase us, to know that you can't erase us. People have tried to do it before. They fail. They. They make our lives worse, they make our lives harder. That is real. But they can't get rid of us.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And. And so I wanted to look at that in a narrative fashion within the story. And the last thing I'll say, given what we've just discussed, is the book was originally supposed to have no pictures. It was supposed to be my first book with no illustrations. I wanted the words to do what they do in a novel with no pictures, which was paint the images in the reader's mind so the reader becomes the illustrator. But my editor, David Levithan, felt very strongly that we could probably find a use for pictures. And I think he, you know, was aware that I can draw, so he, you know, thought. Thought it might be a good idea to see if we could possibly find a reason.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And even though the book isn't a pandemic book and it's set in 1986, I do, I did. I did want to get across the feeling of what it was like to be in that empty, dreamy version of Rome, which also did have fear and death stalking everywhere because it was the height of the pandemic. So we had the idea to open the book with this walk through an empty, almost empty version of Rome. And. And I realized as we were thinking up this idea that what would happen is that by the time you got to the text, and unlike Hugo, I didn't take out any of the text I wrote, I essentially kept everything I had written. Yeah, but what it meant was, when we got to the things we had seen in the pictures, the Pantheon, the elephant obelisk, the talking stat, the speaking statue, where people leave notes, I wouldn't need to describe them very much because we would have already seen them. And for any reader who had not been to Rome, which I knew would probably be most of my readers, the pictures will give you a sense of having been to Rome when you're reading the text, because you'll remember having seen all of those places. And then I should also say that for anybody who goes out and picks up a copy of Run Away With Me, there are also pictures at the very end. So it's. It's bookended by images. But I would suggest if it's possible for any reader to not flip ahead and look at the pictures at the end, see if you can wait until you get to them to see what they are. Because I think they will work a little bit better if you do flip ahead. It'll be fine. It won't ruin the story per se, but I. I enjoy telling people not to look if they. If they can.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Brian Selznick]

And I. I'm glad you ended up adding them because I think they're very effective, especially the. The. The back half, I think, does something really incredible. So thank you. Well done. And, you know, a little bit as I'm talking to you, I'm thinking, man, that you got to meet Marie Sendak and Remy and. Did you say it's Charlotte?

It is actually saying that wrong with an sh sound, even though it's ch.

I'm glad I know that now. I'm listening to you tell these stories and I'm like, damn it. I wanna. I wanted to have those experiences. And then I thought, yeah, but I'm getting a piece of that. Getting to meet you and talk to you, and you're passing that on. It's just an honor to speak with someone with such great work. So thank you so much for doing this, and I hope everybody goes and checks out the book.

Thank you. It was really, really great to talk to you.

[Caldecott Winner]

Massive thanks to Brian Selznick for this super inspiring chat. And thank you. Very inspiring book. Go check out Run Away With Me wherever you get books. It's gorgeously illustrated. It was an emotional and powerful read. I just thought it had a lot of magic without breaking the realism. It's an incredibly powerful feat, and I really enjoyed it. So thanks for the book.

[Brian Selznick]

Everybody.

[Caldecott Winner]

Go check that out. I'm back for our creative call to adventure. This one's called Timepiece, and I wanted to prompt you with some of the themes we were talking about from this episode of seeing yourself not as this isolated thing, but as part of a greater through line, both in terms of your identity and your experiences and your culture, your interests, your style, your influences as a creative person. Like, you are not an isolated event. And so I think it can be powerful to look back through out time, back into the past, and see, like, what am I kind of picking up the torch with in my creative work. One of the people that I see as you know, I hope I have some connection to in the work that I do is Jim Henson. And I called this CTA Timepiece because he has a little short film that was really important to his creative development called Timepiece. It's all about time. It's kind of a avant garde little short film that's really fun and cool. And when I started thinking about, like, okay, what is the connection that I have to people like Jim Henson or Tova Janssen, the creator of Moomin, And I think a really big part of what I'm trying to be part of, a really big part of what I'm trying to be a part of, is this idea that what makes you great is what makes you different, and that what makes you belong is what makes you different, not necessarily what makes you the same. And that we are better off when we have a diversity in our groups and in our families and in our culture, where, from my perspective, I'm really thinking about it in my work, you know, I think diversity is great in all kinds of ways, but I feel compelled by my own neurodivergence and the idea that we're all bringing very different brains to the table, and that's a good thing. And so I think the Muppets and Moomin were a great celebration of that. And I'm happy to be a part, a small part, with the books that I make in that kind of lineage. And what I like about that, too, is I don't need to do everything I can ask myself, okay, what does that look like in 2025? And that doesn't need to be the end of that journey either. It just needs to be a small part so it doesn't have to compete with. It doesn't have to conclude that mission. It just has to participate. And so I can take the pressure off a little bit and just do my little part in this day, in the era that I'm making stuff. And I hope that if you think about your influences and you think about what were they doing, what were they accomplishing, what was their mission, and how does that connect to what you're doing today? And also imagine that there will be people coming after you that will pick up that work and finish it or continue it, that you don't need to do all of it here and now. And so I think it's really inspiring to think about the context in which you're making your work as a part of a rich history of people that came before you. So hope that encourages you and inspires you. Massive thanks again to Brian Selznick for all the time and energy. Love this chat. Huge thanks to Sophie Miller for being an editor and producer on the show and helping me form this episode. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio and video edits, animation and sound design. Huge thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme song and our soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pedestrian Dump.

[Andy J. Pizza]

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[Brian Selznick]

Okay, the podcast is over, so I.

[Caldecott Winner]

Don'T know why you're still listening, but.

[Brian Selznick]

I am glad that you enjoyed it.

[Caldecott Winner]

Enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry, market.

[Brian Selznick]

And niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our [e-mail] and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path Handbooklet. And the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up. But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y' all.