5typos.net
Journaling Prompts: Random Entry Starters
When faced with the blank page, it’s nearly impossible not to want to switch to anything else. One of the reasons that I’m into prompts recently is that it gives a nudge to just answer it. And once you get started, it’s very easy to just let the habit kick-in and continue writing.
I’ve been playing with a Shortcut script which randomly selects one of the below sentences as title of an input prompt:
- Describe the day in three words
- Today I learned that
- If it were morning again I’d tell myself
- Today I daydreamed that
- The quote of the day was
- Today I spent time with
- The best meal of the day was
- The day got interesting when
- The better left unsaid secret of today was
- The photo I did not take today was
The intention is not to answer any of them directly, that’s why the prompt itself should not be included in the sentence you write. Rather I just take the prompt as the topic to address in the first few sentences. Sometimes it’s a simple continuation of the sentence, other times I just follow wherever the writing takes me.
None of this should be a solution in search of a problem. If the first few sentences give you no trouble, don’t mess with what works. But if you find that on averages days you have to fight the urge to just write nothing new today, then these could be useful.