My November prompt is late because my brain was fixated on the mid-term elections and the possibility of violence in the streets after the results were announced.

If you are a creative writer or artist, you probably would rather be reading, journaling, doing yoga stretches or breath work, listening to music or poetry readings, and writing-- a lot more than you would like to be carrying a sign and shouting slogans in a protest march.

That doesn’t mean that creatives are oblivious to wrongs in this world. But our activism is of a different sort. As an example, I can’t get out of my mind that I heard that the huge private prison corporation, Core Civic Inc., looks at every state’s data on how many third graders cannot read at grade level in order to plan how many new prison cells they will need in 15 years.

I can’t adjust my thinking to this alarming fact. Having been an elementary school reading tutor in a program that was not at all making a difference, I don’t want to do that.

But as a writer, we have the incredible gift of words. Words can refuse to “toe the line.” We can respond to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “creative maladjustment,” to refuse to adjust to injustice, inequity and pure meanness. We can compose messages, leave our words on the phones of members of school boards, then print out our script and mail it. Somebody out there will read and think about our words, just as some respond to our poetry or short stories.

Consider the words of Andrea Balt - an artist, writer, a creative troublemaker, and founder of The Rebelle Society.

“Your weirdness will make you stronger.
Your dark side will keep you whole.
Your vulnerability will connect you to the rest of our suffering world.
Your creativity will set you free.”

So here is my prompt to spur your writing:

Write down one or two situations or behavior by others that gall you. Pay attention to what has been hanging around in your mind.

What might you do with your creative talents to stir the water, to, in the words of John Lewis, “make good trouble”?

Make it into a complete sentence.