Wrapping Up My October Writing Challenge

Fun, But Too Confining

Jack Vance
2 min readNov 1, 2023

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Halloween ghost pumpkin
Image by Biljana Jovanovic from Pixabay

Right before the beginning of October, I decided that I’d try something new. I’d always wanted to devote an October to writing October-related stuff. Halloween, horror, and other spooky-themed posts. I knew it wouldn’t be popular, and I was okay with that. I wanted to do it for me.

How did it go? About like I expected. It wasn’t popular, and my stats reflected that. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be to stay on topic. I enjoy these themes, so writing about them didn’t feel like a chore. My idea journal contains several items I didn’t have the time to turn into posts during the month.

Would I do it again? I doubt it. Committing to one theme, even one I love, for a month was too confining. There were times when I wanted to write about something else and didn’t. I would write more October-related stuff in a future October, but I’d be flexible about it. I wouldn’t limit myself.

I’m beginning to realize that flexibility is more important to me than I knew. I want to be able to go where the inspiration takes me, and that is a big part of what keeps writing fun. This October was a good example. Even my favorite set of themes became too limiting as the month went on. I started to feel silly as I remembered that this limitation was self-imposed.

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Jack Vance
Jack Vance

Written by Jack Vance

Blogger @ Atheist Revolution (https://www.atheistrev.com/). I write about atheism, humanism, skepticism, freethought, and other topics of interest.

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