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There are periods in a writer’s life when absolutely nothing appears to be happening. The ideas that normally jostle for attention have gone suspiciously quiet, the manuscript you were once mildly obsessed with now seems beige, and you can spend twenty minutes moving a sentence from one paragraph to another before moving it back again.
At some point, checking whether anybody has emailed you in the previous forty-three seconds begins to feel like legitimate research.
I’ve come to think of these as creative fallow periods rather than creative failure. Sometimes we are genuinely tired; sometimes we have overworked the book until we can no longer see it clearly; sometimes the analytical part of the brain has been running the office for so long that the strange, associative, imaginative part has quietly gone out for a cigarette.
Pushing harder does not always fix that kind of stuckness because the problem may not be a lack of effort. Sometimes the brain simply needs different material.
This is where visioning can be surprisingly useful. Not because sticking a photograph of a bestselling novel onto cardboard causes Penguin Random House to sense a disturbance in the Force, but because imagery gives the brain another way into the work. Pictures, colours, feelings, words, textures and imagined future experiences can bring our attention back to what originally excited us, help us see possibilities we have stopped noticing and, perhaps most usefully, give the less deliberate parts of the mind something interesting to work with.
For writers, though, I think the traditional vision-board exercise works far better if we split it into two distinct boards. One is about the writer you want to be and the creative life you want to build. The other is about the book itself and the imaginative world you are trying to create. They can support each other, but they are doing different jobs.
What Do We Actually Mean by the Subconscious?
I’m using subconscious here in the ordinary conversational sense, rather than suggesting that a miniature Jungian librarian is sitting behind your frontal lobe carefully filing abandoned plot ideas. A great deal of mental processing happens outside deliberate awareness. Memories become associated with other memories, emotional responses develop, attention shifts, and solutions sometimes seem to appear after we have consciously stopped trying to solve the problem.
Creativity appears to depend partly on movement between deliberate control and more spontaneous associative processing. A 2025 review of the brain’s default mode network describes its involvement in remote association, integration of information and creative cognition.. Even more relevant to writers, a 2025 Scientific Reports study used a writing task and found that mind-wandering during an incubation period predicted later improvements in creative performance.
None of this means that staring dreamily out of the window for three hours automatically produces Chapter Twelve. I have conducted extensive informal research on this point and the results are disappointing.
It does suggest, however, that conscious effort is not the only useful state for creativity. Sometimes we need to give the brain good ingredients and then stop digging them up every six minutes to see whether anything has grown.
Why Imagery Can Be So Effective
Visioning used to be explained rather loosely as the subconscious being unable to tell the difference between real and imagined experience. That is not really accurate. The brain can distinguish imagination from reality, which is fortunate because otherwise watching Jaws would cause serious logistical problems at the swimming pool.
When you imagine yourself writing confidently, completing a manuscript, speaking about your book, entering your ideal writing space or inhabiting the world of your story, you are not tricking your brain into believing the event has already happened. You are rehearsing a possibility, giving your attention a direction and making certain ideas, feelings and behaviours easier to bring back into awareness.
That is a much more useful way to think about a vision board. It is not a magic ordering system. It is a visual and emotional cue.
Why a Vision Board Needs More Than a Picture of the Prize
Research on mental simulation has repeatedly suggested that imagining the process of achieving something can be more useful than merely enjoying the imagined outcome. In classic work by Pham and Taylor, students who imagined the process of preparing properly for an exam studied more and performed better than those who focused mainly on the desired result. Their work also included an essay-writing task and found benefits when people mentally rehearsed the process around the work.
That gives writers a useful clue. Put the finished book on the board, certainly, but also put the writer who creates it there. Include the desk, the drafts, the protected writing time, the notebooks, the research, the revision and the person steadily producing pages when nobody is applauding.
There is also an inconvenient piece of psychology for anyone who would prefer to manifest a publishing contract while remaining horizontal. Research by Gabriele Oettingen and colleagues has found that simply indulging in idealised positive fantasies does not necessarily increase effort. In some studies, stronger positive fantasies were followed by less effort towards the goal. Apparently the brain is perfectly capable of enjoying the imaginary launch party without insisting that we first finish the manuscript.
This is where mental contrasting can help. In a separate exercise, you imagine the future you want and then identify the genuine obstacle that may interfere with reaching it. You do not need to put the obstacle itself on the vision board. Instead, use it to identify the behaviour or emotional state you want to strengthen, and put that positive version on the board.
If you repeatedly stop when the writing becomes difficult, you might add I move confidently through difficult chapters alongside an image representing momentum or courage. If you continually polish Chapter One instead of writing Chapter Twelve, try I write forward with confidence or I complete my first draft before polishing it. The difficulty has shown you what needs attention, but it does not need its own framed portrait.
Why Visioning Is So Useful When You Feel Creatively Fallow
When writers get stuck, we tend to attack the stuckness with more analysis. We ask what is wrong with the plot, whether Chapter Five should move, whether the protagonist is compelling enough and whether the entire manuscript needs restructuring. Somewhere around this point somebody usually introduces a spreadsheet, because there are apparently very few creative crises that cannot be made more alarming by adding columns.
Sometimes the problem is not that we need another answer. We may simply need more raw material. Pictures, colour, music, sensory cues, faces, landscapes, objects and emotional words can interrupt analytical gridlock and give the associative brain fresh things to connect.
A misty forest may suddenly remind you what the book was supposed to feel like. A photograph of an old kitchen might unlock a memoir scene that has resisted three hours of determined remembering. One face in a magazine can turn Generic Male Character Number Two into someone with a temperament, a childhood and several unresolved issues with his father.
The aim is not to explain every image you choose. It is to notice which ones wake something up.
Create Two Boards, Because You Are Visioning Two Different Things
The first board represents your life as a successful writer. It is about identity, confidence, creative habits, working conditions, income, readers, opportunities and the emotional experience of being the writer you want to become.
The second board represents the book itself. It is about character, atmosphere, setting, memory, conflict, theme, sensory detail and the emotional experience you want the reader to enter.
Keeping them separate gives each board a much clearer purpose. It also prevents the book itself from becoming buried under images of launches, publishing contracts and Netflix deals before the poor protagonist has even survived Chapter Four.
Board One: Your Life as a Successful Writer
The best place to begin is not with magazines, Pinterest or Canva. Begin with imagination.
Step 1: Picture an Ordinary Day
Give yourself ten or fifteen quiet minutes and imagine that you are already living the writing life you want. The word ordinary is important here. Do not imagine the day you win the Booker Prize, appear on national television and receive a seven-figure film offer before lunch. Imagine an ordinary Tuesday.
Where are you living? Where do you write? What does the room look like? When do you begin? How much time do you have for creative work? Are you writing books full-time, comfortably combining writing with another career, teaching, researching, coaching, travelling, speaking or meeting readers?
Think about the practical texture of that life too. What are you earning from your writing? What does that income allow you to do? Are you writing fewer projects but choosing them carefully? Are you working from home, from a studio or from a cottage somewhere with an improbable number of trees?
Then ask the question that gives the board its emotional centre: How do you feel in this life? Perhaps the answer is confident, free, absorbed, secure, respected, curious, peaceful, connected or proud. These feeling words should guide what eventually goes onto the board.
Step 2: Write the Vision in the Present Tense
Before collecting pictures, write a short description of this life as though you are already experiencing it. Keep it positive and specific.
You might write: I work in a peaceful space I love. I have time to think, create and finish the books I begin. My writing connects with readers, I am proud of the quality of my work and I earn well from work I genuinely enjoy. I feel confident, creative and free.
The exercise does not need to sound sensible to anyone else because nobody else is approving the budget. The point is to get clear about the writing life you want rather than the one you think successful writers are supposed to want.
Step 3: Gather Images That Represent That Life
Now begin collecting pictures. You can use magazines, photographs, postcards, printed images, drawings, fabric, handwritten words or digital images if you prefer Canva, Pinterest or PowerPoint.
Look for images of writing spaces, books, notebooks, readers, author events, travel, research, financial freedom, peaceful mornings, creative work and whatever else represents your version of success. If you want to speak at festivals, put that on the board. If the thought of appearing in front of 500 people makes you want to fake your own death, do not include a conference stage because somebody else has decided that visibility equals success.
The images do not need to be aesthetically perfect. They need to provoke the right response in you.
Step 4: Attach Feeling Words to the Images
Do not only show what you want; show how you want it to feel. Beside the beautiful writing room you might put peaceful or free. Beside the completed manuscript, perhaps proud. Beside a picture representing readers, connected. Beside financial success, secure.
Connect the desired future with positive emotions and expressing that desired state in the present tense. This is one of the most useful parts of the process because a vague goal such as publish a book becomes a richer imagined experience.
Step 5: Add Positive Present-Tense Statements
Keep the language focused on what you want to create rather than what you are trying to stop doing. Instead of I will stop procrastinating, use I begin easily and keep moving. Instead of I won’t abandon my books, use I complete the books I begin. Instead of I hope people like my work, try My writing connects with the readers it was created for.
The board should repeatedly direct attention towards the desired behaviour and experience.
There is little value in surrounding yourself with attractive reminders of everything currently going wrong.
Step 6: Include the Process as Well as the Outcome
This is where the board becomes genuinely useful rather than simply decorative. If you include the published book, also include the manuscript. If you include the launch, include the desk. If you include happy readers, include the revision that helps create a book worth recommending.
Pictures of somebody drafting, researching, revising, reading, thinking and steadily producing pages remind you that the writing life itself is part of the vision. Success is not only the photograph taken afterwards when everyone is holding champagne.
Step 7: Assemble It and Put It Somewhere Visible
Use a large sheet of card if you want something physical, or create a digital version. Spread everything out before fixing it in place and move the pieces around until the board feels right. Do not worry about symmetry, design rules or whether a graphic designer would approve.
Then put the board somewhere you will actually encounter it. A vision board hidden in a cupboard because guests might think you have joined a cult is unlikely to have much effect.
Spend a minute or two with it before writing. You do not need to chant at it. Simply look, notice the feelings and images, and reconnect with the direction you chose.
Board Two: The Book Itself
The second board has a very different job. Forget your career, publishing goals and future success for a while because this board belongs entirely to the manuscript.
Step 1: Decide What the Book Feels Like
Before looking for pictures, choose four to six words that capture the emotional atmosphere of the book. A fantasy novel might feel ancient, dangerous, lush, strange and hopeful. A memoir might feel raw, nostalgic, funny, defiant and tender. A business book might feel clear, bold, practical and energising.
These words become a filter. Whenever you consider adding an image, ask whether it belongs emotionally to this particular book.
This can also be useful months later. If the manuscript has wandered in a completely different direction, the board allows you to ask whether the book has evolved naturally or whether Chapter Eleven has quietly joined another novel.
Step 2: Build the Visual World
For fiction, collect faces that remind you of your characters. They do not need to be perfect casting choices; perhaps one photograph captures the expression, another the clothes and another the general air of someone who has definitely buried something behind the shed.
Add houses, landscapes, rooms, weather, streets, vehicles, clothing, architecture, animals, colours, food and important objects. If your protagonist lives in an old hotel near the sea, find the hotel. If she drives a battered red car, include one. If the whole book somehow feels like wet pavements, dark green velvet, winter sunlight and crows, collect those too.
Not everything needs a literal explanation. Sometimes an image simply feels like the book, and that is enough.
Step 3: For Memoir, Build a Memory Map
Memoir writers can use the book board to trigger sensory memory. Gather photographs or images of places, homes, schools, streets, furniture, cars, clothing, food, hairstyles, music, landscapes and ordinary objects from the relevant periods.
Memory often responds far better to a concrete cue than to an instruction. Remember everything about 1986 is rather useless. A photograph of a particular kitchen table may suddenly bring back where everybody sat, what was always on the table, what somebody was wearing and the argument nobody discussed afterwards.
Symbolic images can work too. A locked gate may represent exclusion, a long road may evoke leaving, a tree may represent safety and the ocean may represent freedom. The board is not an evidentiary record of your life; it is there to help you get back inside the experience.
Step 4: For Nonfiction, Make the Ideas Visible
A nonfiction board may be more conceptual. A leadership book might use images representing trust, courage, responsibility, influence and difficult decisions. A book about recovery could include rebuilding, movement, strength, community and renewal. A book about injustice might use images connected with dignity, voice, fairness and change.
Include the reader as well. Ask who they are when they first open the book, what they are struggling with and how you would like them to feel when they finish. This gives the board a human centre and reminds you why you are writing the book in the first place.
Step 5: Add Words From Inside the Book
The book board can contain dialogue, questions, thematic phrases, character beliefs and scraps of language that take you quickly back into the manuscript. A thriller might include Who are you when nobody is watching? A fantasy novel might use She knows the house remembers. A memoir might carry something as simple as This is where I learned to leave.
These lines do not need to appear in the final manuscript. They are cues, and their job is to reconnect you with the emotional territory of the book.
Step 6: Use the Board When the Manuscript Goes Flat
When you become stuck, resist the temptation to stare at the troublesome paragraph for another hour. Choose one image from the book board and freewrite from it for ten minutes.
Ask what happened five minutes before the picture, what your character would notice first, which emotion the image creates and why you chose it in the first place. For nonfiction, ask what idea the image represents and what story or example would make that idea visible to the reader.
The answer may have nothing directly to do with the picture. That is perfectly fine. The point is to interrupt analytical gridlock and provoke another association.
A photograph of a forest might unexpectedly solve a relationship problem. A face may reveal something about a character. An old kitchen could release a memory. A colour might make you realise that the supposedly cheerful chapter you have been fighting with for three days is not cheerful at all.
Then Step Away
After working with either board, you do not necessarily need to force an immediate result. Go for a walk, make supper, shower, garden, drive somewhere or do something mildly absorbing. Creative incubation research suggests that stepping away after engaging with a problem can sometimes give associative processing more room to operate.
This is the part many writers struggle with because doing nothing useful feels suspiciously like doing nothing. Yet some creative work happens after the deliberate work has stopped. The board supplies imagery, emotional cues and possibilities; the brain then has something new to rearrange quietly in the background.
Keep Both Boards Positive, but Let Reality Inform Them
Neither board needs photographs of failure, procrastination or everything you are afraid will happen. Keep them focused on desired feelings, behaviours and outcomes.
If an obstacle becomes obvious, use mental contrasting separately. Identify the obstacle, decide what response would help, and then translate that response into positive language or imagery for the writer board.
If you notice that you continually abandon manuscripts once the excitement fades, the board might say I complete the books I begin. If you become trapped in endless revision, use I write forward before I polish. If you struggle to take your own writing seriously, perhaps I trust my voice and give my creative work proper space belongs there.
The obstacle has still been useful because it has shown you where the friction is. You simply do not need to stare at the friction every morning.
Let the Boards Change
A vision board is not a contract with your past self. You are allowed to change it.
The romantic comedy may become darker. The memoir may turn out to be about forgiveness when you thought it was about anger. The traditional publishing dream may become an independent publishing plan that suits you far better.
Notice which images still create energy and which have become dead weight. Replace what no longer fits.
Re-inspiration does not always mean finding the original vision again. Sometimes the most interesting thing a board can show you is that the book, or the writer, has changed.
Visioning During a Creative Fallow Period
Writers often panic when production slows because words on the page feel like the only evidence that creativity is still alive. They are not.
If the words are not coming, gathering images can keep you connected to the work without requiring immediate output. Visit a gallery, take photographs, cut things from magazines, collect postcards, colours, music, textures, strange sentences and objects. Wander through a second-hand shop without requiring every dusty lamp to reveal the plot.
These activities feed associative thinking. Creativity increasingly appears to involve cooperation between brain systems involved in spontaneous association and those involved in deliberate control. There are periods when pushing is useful, periods when gathering is useful and periods when the brain needs room to rummage around without management standing over it with a clipboard.
A good writing life needs all of them.
A vision board is not a supernatural ordering system for publishing contracts, and it is not simply an excuse to spend Saturday surrounded by magazines and a dangerous quantity of glue. Used thoughtfully, it becomes an external prompt for imagination and attention.
The writer board keeps your larger creative life visible. It reminds you how you want to work, who you want to become and what kind of writing life you are actually building.
The book board takes you into the manuscript. It holds the faces, colours, landscapes, emotions, questions, sensory cues and associations that make the book feel alive.
Keep both positive, visual and emotionally specific. Write in the present tense. Include the process as well as the result. Let real obstacles inform the positive behaviours you place on the writer board, then give yourself concrete actions that move you towards them.
And when creativity goes quiet, resist immediately declaring it dead. Sometimes the words need work, sometimes the imagination needs feeding and sometimes the brain is simply doing something useful where you cannot watch it.
Give it images, colour, feeling and possibility, then leave it alone long enough to see what comes back.
The subconscious is not literally a hidden picture-gallery in the brain, but much of our nonconscious processing responds powerfully to imagery, pattern, emotion, and association. A picture can often activate a whole network of meaning faster than a paragraph of explanation: a writing desk may represent freedom, a finished book may evoke pride, a particular landscape may carry an entire emotional world. This is why vision boards can be so effective. By repeatedly placing meaningful images, present-tense words, and positive emotional cues in our visual field, we keep the desired direction mentally available. Our attention is then more likely to notice ideas, opportunities, choices, and behaviours that fit that direction, instead of allowing the vision to disappear beneath deadlines, doubt, laundry, and the seventeen other things demanding our conscious attention. A good vision board does not magically create the future; it keeps reminding the brain what future we are trying to create.
At Harvard Ink, we work with writers throughout the creative cycle, including those awkward periods when a manuscript has gone quiet, the original excitement has faded or you can still sense the book somewhere but no longer quite know how to get back into it.
Developmental editing and writing coaching can help reconnect a writer with the emotional centre of a project, find patterns inside apparently disconnected material and create enough structure for imagination to begin moving again. Sometimes the manuscript needs serious structural work; sometimes the writer simply needs a different doorway.
Explore Harvard Ink’s developmental editing, writing coaching, ghostwriting and indie-publishing support here:
Originally published on LinkedIn October 30 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/psychology-writing-series-visioning-book-how-vision-board-oj4zf/
Image by Shira on Pixabay
