Sharing your dream with others is one way to help that dream become a reality. There are two primary benefits that can be realized by sharing your dream. The first is accountability. The second, shared ownership. Regardless of which or both benefits you seek, sharing your dream is essential.

In this article, we’ll explore seven ways that you can share your dream of publication to increase your overall success.

1) Announce your intentions

By making your intention of publication known to others, you take the first step in allowing others to encourage, support, and even participate in your efforts to realize the dream. Sharing the details of your work better clarifies the expectations surrounding the dream and allows for consideration of best and worst case scenarios for meeting your goal. 

2) Log your progress

While using a writing log is a suggested practice for maintaining forward progress on your projects and tracking your performance along the way, it can also be a tool for sharing that progress with others. Consider posting your progress publicly on a blog documenting your writing journey or privately emailing information about deadlines and daily performance to a mentor or accountability partner.

3) Join or form a writing group

Writing groups provide multiple people who can hold you accountable and encourage your writing efforts while sharing in the experience through writing of their own. Because everyone in the group is working on their own writing projects, the accountability received by the group is also being provided to the group and everyone wins. If a local writing group doesn’t exist, you might consider starting one with a few other authors in your area or discipline.

4) Present your work

Traditionally conference presentations have given additional motivation to move forward with writing projects and to share research efforts with a larger community, even prior to publication. They can also be used to announce forthcoming articles and books. An alternative to conference presentations are webinars which may have a broader reach to an online audience.

5) Collaborate with others

Collaboration does not necessarily require working with another author. This could be the involvement of other researchers, editors, proofreaders, or anyone who can provide insight, knowledge, and assistance with your project. The idea of collaborating with others is that new ideas, fresh perspectives, and additional insight will make your work stronger and your dream of publication more likely.

6) Work with a coauthor

Forming a coauthoring relationship with someone can be a rewarding process of shared ownership. Together your combined voice is responsible for the actual writing of the manuscript, but a coauthor can provide a greater level of commitment to the work than other potential collaborators. 

7) Engage your support network

Many people are willing, and even eager, to support your dreams – if for no other reason than they care about you as an individual. Perhaps these people are not skilled in areas that make them good choices for coauthors or collaborators, but they can provide motivation, encouragement, and accountability nonetheless. These people include family, friends, and colleagues with whom you share your intentions and dream of publication and ask them to check in with you along the way.

Regardless of the method you use for accountability and shared ownership, the result of sharing your dream is that your dream will become more defined, refined, and possible to achieve. 

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Eric Schmieder is the Membership Marketing Manager for TAA. He has taught computer technology concepts to curriculum, continuing education, and corporate training students since 2001. A lifelong learner, teacher, and textbook author, Eric seeks to use technology in ways that improve results in his daily processes and in the lives of those he serves. His latest textbook, Web, Database, and Programming: A foundational approach to data-driven application development using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, and PHP, First Edition, is available now through Sentia Publishing.