Many successful authors have found that creating dream boards helps them visualize and focus on their writing career paths and their processes. Making a dream board (also called a vision board or dream collage) can be fun, easy, and truly enlightening for writers.

What Is A Dream Board?

The traditional dream board is a poster board filled with a collage of images torn from magazines or printed off the Internet—images that reflect a person’s goals, hobbies, and inspiration.

Why Do Writers Need A Vision Board?

With a vision board, your dreams of “Get my writing accepted” or “Publish a novel” can become more tangible. By focusing on quotes, words, and images that represent your dreams, you can visualize the process of getting your work published, or landing a literary agent, or finishing that creative writing course.

Some authors use dream boards to focus on a novel in progress, with the images in the collage representing theme, characters, mood, and setting. Writers may also create vision boards to plan out their publishing or monetary goals for the year or to lay out ideas for marketing and promoting their work. Dream boards can also help authors visualize their creative goals, like writing in a new genre or tackling a difficult or painful subject.

A vision board can also serve as a visual depository for all the ideas running through your head. For example: If a photo of a rose inspires ideas for a short story or poem about your grandmother, stick it on your board as a reminder until you get the chance to start writing.

Whatever your reason for creating a dream board, these visual reminders will help you stay focused on writing in a multitasking world.

How To Make A Traditional Dream Board

Collect inspirational words and images that embody the spirit of your goal: the title page of your favorite book; quotes and positive affirmations; a picture of a smiling, confident person; a wad of cash; the logo of your favorite publishing house; a writers’ retreat you’d love to attend; the word “persevere.”

Arrange these images using pushpins or other temporary adhesive on a poster board, foam-core board, or a large corkboard, and embellish with whatever you’d like—stickers, flowers, a fortune cookie fortune. Place the board where you’ll see it every day. You can add or subtract images at any time as your writing goals change or are accomplished.

How To Make A Digital Dream Board

There are many vision board software programs to choose from, some more workable than others. Picasa, Google’s photo program, allows you to create a digital collage of images, as do Glogster and Ript. Or you can create a board on Pinterest around a central theme. Once you’ve created your digital dream board, you can use it as your computer’s screen saver or wallpaper, or print it out.

Think Positive; Dream Big

Many people believe in the power of visualization and positive thinking—that visualizing reaching a goal will turn it into reality. Whether you believe this or not, a dream board is a useful way to define your goals, create a positive outlook, and make your dream come true!

QUESTION: Have you ever created a dream board?