Inktober Daily Writing Prompt Challenge [2023]

Summon the courage to write daily.

Starting October 1st, InkJournal is hosting a month-long writing challenge filled with ghosts, haunted houses, and the supernatural.

As part of our “Inky Prompts” inspirational daily e-mails, October becomes “Prompt-ober!”

Each day in October brings a Halloween-themed writing prompt crafted to get your pen moving and overcome the “Blank Page Syndrome.”

During this writing challenge, you’ll be casting spells, brewing magic potions, talking to ghosts, escaping haunted houses, and battling monsters. All while using your imagination and flexing your creative writing skills.

Why Halloween-themed Prompts?

Memento Mori

Death and decay are part of the fall season. It reminds us that nothing lasts forever. Halloween is a celebration and a reminder that there is beauty in death. Without death, life would have no meaning, no zest.

“Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.”

-Gretel Ehrlich

Being reminded of our mortality allows us to be more present in the moment, act with urgency, and appreciate the small things in life.

Try on a New Persona

Halloween encourages us to alter our identity through the use of masks and costumes. We’re so used to seeing the same face and the same body wearing the same clothes day after day. For one day a year, we look foreign to ourselves.

Adopting a new persona creates a more fluid sense of self. If you feel stuck in the same old grind, plateauing in your progress, then shifting your concept of self might help you realize the changes you need to make.

Embrace the Shadow

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term “shadow self” to refer to the repressed part of ourselves that we hide from others. Halloween allows us to dabble in the shadow, the macabre, and the unsavory. Halloween costumes range from grotesque to overtly sexual, and crude humor.

Jung believed that acknowledging and expressing the shadow self brings better balance and understanding. If we can be more accepting, and more forgiving of our less desirable traits, the more we can grow.

Inkyprompts Rules / Guidelines:

When you sign up for Inky Prompts, you’ll receive a new Promptober writing prompt each day. Feel free to respond to these prompts in any medium you prefer.

If you want to write your response, you can. If you want to draw or sketch a comic to tell a story, then that’s great, too. There’s no wrong way. Get creative!

Optional: you may post your responses by the end of the day and tag @inkjournal and #promptober so we can share your great works.