Get Your Coven Together and Create a Revolution on Friday the 13th
If you are a writer and a woman, you’e probably heard about the great new website SheWrites started by a very powered woman, Kamy Wicoff, and already boasting a membership of over 5000. I just posted this over there and couldn’t resist sharing it with you. Seems that Publishers Weekly released its annual list of Top 10 Books, and guess what, there wasn’t a single book by a woman on it. So Kamy swung into action, which I love. The rest of the story will be obvious. (BTW, if you’re a woman writer, join up today by clicking the picture on the right.)
So here’s what posted at SheWrites:
I like Friday the 13th. Thirteen is a great number. Why? First of all, my birthday is on the 13th, April 13th. Every once in a while it lands on a Friday, and I feel just as lucky then as when it falls on a Tuesday. The gifts are just as much fun to open. Publisher’s Weekly has handed us at SheWrites a gift by calling attention to the lack of books by women writers on their Top 10 list.
I also like Friday the 13th because 13 is the number of a coven. Covens are powerful. Every women needs her coven, no matter what her religion is or what she thinks about witches. We need our circle of women friends, our old or new girls network. Our sister courage. Our girl gangs. One of us alone can accomplish a lot, but 13 of us together make a movement. Remember, thirteen colonies started a revolution and formed a new nation in 1776. Kamy has challenged us to create our own revolution.
Third, according to some traditions, twelve is considered “complete” but 13 is deemed “irregular” because it disrupts the “even dozen.” That makes me like 13 even better because in my experience disruption, or chaos, is opportunity. In a time of chaos, people are open to new ideas they wouldn’t have considered when things were normal. Chaos breeds innovation. Or, as in the case of the disruption/chaos of the recession, it’s the opportunity for women to advance into positions they haven’t held before. Men made the messes we’re in, and everyone can see that women might just be able to clean them up. So more women are moving into leadership positions in business and politics. That can only be a good thing. Just as it was a good thing for Publisher’s Weekly to jolt us to action. Bet they won’t make the same mistake next year!
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
So I like 13 just fine. As it happens, I have 13 books by women on my running list of books I either need either as references for the book I’m writing—Woman Unlimited—or because I just want to read them. So at 1pm—1300—today, Friday the 13th, I’ll meander over to the bookstore and load up. Thanks, Kamy, for giving us this great idea!
PS. I like black cats too.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.