It’s Here! Our Future Is Kind Is Out Today

Hi, Loves,

Happy World Kindness Day! It’s also launch day. Our Future Is Kind: The Ultimate Guide to Making a Difference is out in the world, and I’m in it!

Get your copy here.

When you click that link, know this: it’s so much bigger than a book. This is a movement.

I’ve lived with this book for months. I worked through draft chapters with my pod of fellow authors and read much of it when my galley copy arrived. Still, a few days ago I curled up with it, read a big chunk in one sitting, and was so moved. Chapter after chapter, people who had every reason to harden chose kindness instead: toward themselves, toward others, toward all of us. I closed it feeling, perhaps for the first time, a real sense of belonging, and so happy to be part of this movement toward the kinder world we want for ourselves, our children, and our fur babies. I think you’ll feel that way too.

A kinder future won’t happen by accident. We have to build it on purpose, together.

My chapter, “The Future Is Kind, Conscious, and Consenting: Cultivating the Courage to Write Our Way There,” is personal. In it, I introduce you to an early tragedy of mine. On the heels of a freak accident, an undergraduate professor who doubled as my boyfriend, abandoned me oh so slowly. And, sadly, I’d long before abandoned myself. It’s a great example of me not creating the future I wanted to live in. To figure out how I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be, I take you down the long road back to one question: Given the 30-year age gap, an even bigger power gap, and my low self-esteem, was I even capable of consent?

Writing my way through that question led me to the idea at the heart of my work. I call it radical consent. It isn’t the absence of a no. It’s the presence of a genuine yes, and that requires consciousness.

Then the chapter turns toward you. The second half is practice: strategies you can use on the page, at work, and at home to notice what you’re agreeing to that you haven’t said yes to, and to write your way toward different choices, which will always yield different outcomes, presuming that’s what you want.

Executive coach Rachel Horan called my chapter a “compelling read with heart, grit and message crucial to our cultural moment.”

This book exists because Michael G Neece believed kindness deserved a guide and gathered us to write it. I coached Michael through his first book, In Kind, so watching him lead this one has been pure joy and I’m so grateful to him for inviting me in to such a remarkable group of humans.

Here’s how you can celebrate with me today:

•       Get your copy today. Order on Amazon. Buying during launch week helps a new book get seen.

•       Leave a review once you’ve read it. A few honest sentences go a long way.

•       Send this, or buy a copy for one person who needs it.

No one writes alone. No one builds a kinder future alone, either. Thank you for being part of mine. And please, write me and let me know what my words, or anyone else’s stirred in you.

With love, kindness, and gratitude,

Clementina

The hardest part of writing (and why you shouldn't do it alone)

Yesterday I wrote about the hardest seat in the workshop: the spotlight, where you sit silently, like a fly on the wall, while other people talk about your work. Today I want to write about the other half of that lesson: choosing the people who will support and encourage you while also telling you the truth.

As a developmental editor and writing coach, I spend my days helping others find the words, structure, and truth for the worlds they’re creating. What never ceases to amaze me, after all these years, is the intimacy that’s possible between reader and writer when the writing is clear, resonant, and unflinchingly honest. That direct line of communication, when it matters most, determines whether your writing has the desired impact or falls flat.

Writing my chapter for 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘐𝘴 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘥 put me in the spotlight seat. Here’s the irony: the thing I coach people on constantly (get in the muck, don’t write from a safe distance) I had to do myself this time. No hiding behind the editor’s chair.

I didn’t do it alone. Every writer I’ve ever worked with has the curse of knowledge, and not one of us can see the label from inside the jar. That’s why I always say no one should write alone. But it matters who you invite in. Find the readers who are on your side and honest with you. They will help you make the work better.

Huge thanks to Kevin Huntting, Jennifer White, and Brian Biro, the small team of writing partners who pitched in to do for me what I do for so many others. They earned my trust, and a handful of workshop meetings turned into so much more. Some of their comments stung at first. Every one of them made the chapter better.

My chapter is about writing our way to radical consent: the courage to write what’s true, become our own best witnesses, and consciously change our lives for the better.

And here’s a confession. Going into a recent launch meeting, I was doubting myself. Was I doing enough to get the word out? To find early readers? To fill the room for the launch party? Then Michael congratulated me: I’m in the top 20%.

If you’re reading right now, it’s because of you. You make my modest email list small but mighty. To everyone who has already raised a hand to be an early reader or said yes to the launch party: I see you, and I’m so grateful. You’ve shown up for me. Thanks for your commitment to making the world a kinder place.

And, it isn’t too late. Our Future Is Kind comes out November 13th, only a couple of weeks away. You can still be an early reader by joining the launch team here: https://bookprojects.lauradifranco.com/Our-Future-Is-Kind-launch-team, and if you do this, please drop me a line and let me know you’ve done it.

And come celebrate with us at the launch party on World Kindness Day, Friday, November 13th, from 12:00 to 1:30 PM ET. Save your spot here: https://www.ourfutureiskind.com/ofik-launch-party?SQF_HIDDEN=ClementinaEsposito

To my amazing co-authors and writing partners, Jennifer White, Brian Biro, and Kevin Huntting: you guys rock.

Our Future Is Kind® launches Nov. 13th, with 25 co-authors from around the world (Peru, India, Germany, the UK, Mexico, the U.S., and the Philippines).

Good Writers Always Come Back

On Criticism, Rejection, and the Stamina Required to become a writer

We regularly workshop student writing in my classes. In nearly 30 years of teaching writing, a lot has changed, but one thing remains the same: nothing matters more to people than their own writing, and nothing is more fascinating to the people in the room than the other people in the room. They’ll take a piece in progress over something already published, which they can’t change, any day.

Interesting, right?

Now, before I get into the lessons I have for you, let me go first. You know I have writerly ambitions, and I never want to teach from on high. Like a good politician, I always want to be in the mean writing streets, with my finger on the pulse of what it’s really like for you. I try to stay close to the hunger it takes to produce anything worth reading. As much as I can, I invest in writing coaches, conferences, and retreats, going as a student and approaching my work with a beginner’s mind.

Would you trust a therapist who’d never sat in the client’s chair?

Now, bear with me as I tell you this part of my story, in the hopes that I can balance whatever untruth you might be building about how you and I are different, or how criticism and rejection feel for you versus for me, blah, blah, blah, to all the separation.

We are one, my loves.

I also share myself so you can know me, which is another of the top five reasons I write.

Some of you already know that while I was going through my divorce, I shared with some good friends what my ex-husband had written in his court documentation. I told them I wanted to become a better person, be better in my next relationship, and needed them to tell me the truth. They told me they suspected I have ADHD. This, my friends, is a WHOLE story for another time. Suffice it to say, when I finally saw a specialist, and she confirmed what my closest friends already believed, my whole life made sense in a way it hadn’t before. As I read more about ADHD (particularly in women) and learned from the psychiatrist, in light of the new diagnosis, my successes and failures made sense. 

For example, my ex would say, “You can read Dostoevsky in a weekend and write a brilliant treatise, and you can’t follow a simple set of instructions. I don’t get it.”

His disapproval would send me into a shame spiral. Now that I know better, I’d respond differently. I might even agree. For me, boring directions feel like pain, while anything that interests me makes me lock in, hyperfocus, and go all in. I’ve since learned that’s common with ADHD.

Like many people with ADHD, I also deal with what’s often called RSD, short for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It explains why, back in the day and before I healed this with help from my friend Dan Cordle, a bad photograph could quickly send me into a tailspin replete with gremlins that sounded like: You don’t even know how to dress yourself, how can you possibly ________ (fill in the blank with anything from be a mother to write a book)?

My first writing coach’s feedback could paralyze me for days, weeks, even months. Before I learned to trust her 90% of the time, her comments would make me focus on her rather than on myself or the writing until my fight-or-flight calmed down: “She’s a bitch.” “She thinks she’s all that.” A few weeks later, I could look at the same piece, same comments, and think, She’s got a point. I wonder what’ll happen if I rewrite it like this…?

Did you know that in some professional writing workshops, the writer whose work is in the spotlight (that’s what my students and I have decided to call it) has to act like a fly on the wall and say nothing while everyone else talks about their work?

This is a gift! Listening like this is a rare chance to hear your work the way a reader will: without you standing next to it, explaining what you meant. Because that’s the deal, isn’t it? Once it’s out in the world, you can’t follow it around whispering, “What I was trying to say was…” The page has to do it. The fly-on-the-wall rule lets you find out whether it can, while you still have time to fix it.

It’s also, frankly, excruciating.

That said, the silence is temporary, and it isn’t surrender. When the talking stops, you’re still the boss. Every comment is an offer, not an order. You get to take what serves the piece, set aside what doesn’t, and sit with the stuff you’re not sure about until you make the best of it.

As Stephen M. R. Covey puts it in The Speed of Trust, “Feedback often tells you more about the person who is giving it than about you.” And as I always say, “The feedback doesn’t always know how to articulate itself.” And, if I’m patient and kind enough to myself, the spot in my work it points to almost always needs work.

And that’s a good thing.

The willingness to revise and try to make your writing better makes the excruciating part less painful. As the teacher, I can be the person the writer gets mad at, even if I say the writing is gorgeous, the kind of craft I’d happily teach from alongside a recommendation for change. If the writer isn’t ready to hear it, or doesn’t have the capacity at that moment, they may not be able to take the nudges that could make a strong piece even stronger, or run with them. They may even go away from me, giving me an opportunity to do a little more work with my RSD 😒😳😍

That said, I know that writer feeling from the inside. When fight-or-flight gets louder than anything offered for betterment, praise disappears, and suggestions can land like verdicts. That isn’t a failure of talent or character. It’s old hurt, reactivated. The worst part? We may not even know this is all part of the process.

So here’s what I want to say to anyone who’s ever asked for feedback and felt hurt by what they got: the first hearing doesn’t have to be the last word. But I do implore you to listen. Keep listening after that. Remember, Bitch? My first coach? Remember the same comment, a few weeks later: she’s got a point. A few weeks after that, she’s a genius! And when I finally nailed the scene…well, the pain was worth it. 

The feedback didn’t change. I did. In between, I had to do the work. I had to remother the child in me who was often misunderstood, disbelieved, gaslit, objectified, and dismissed. I had to get comfortable with feeling misunderstood or unseen.

You can flinch, have owies, or recoil. And the only way you build stamina — and self-trust — is coming back to the page, and the group if there is one. Rejection can be intense; mine was (for many people with RSD, it can feel like physical pain, the way boredom can). I had to learn that feedback isn’t an assessment of my character, a prediction about my work’s worthiness, or a measure of my willingness to write.

What I want for you is enough stamina to take the sting while you stay with yourself and your writing; don’t run away.

Even the greats needed this lesson. In 1934, nine years after Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald finally published Tender Is the Night; he wasn’t in good shape. Ernest Hemingway, a sometimes brutal critic, wrote to him from Key West that May. He didn’t coddle him. He told him to write and stop worrying about what the boys would say.

Then he went first, the way I try to. “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” he admitted. Hemingway. Ninety-one pages. If that doesn’t loosen the grip of perfectionism, I don’t know what will.

He didn’t pretend the hurt wasn’t real, either. He told Scott that writers have to hurt like hell before they can write seriously, and then he gave him the instruction I come back to again and again: “When you get the damned hurt use it — don’t cheat with it.” Use it. Don’t hide in it, don’t perform it, don’t build a whole identity around it. Be faithful to it, and make something.

And then, the line I’d tattoo on every writer’s wrist if I could: “good writers always come back. Always.”

That’s the stamina I mean. It’s not that you never flinch; it’s that you come back afterward: Bigger, bolder, stronger, more.

So here’s the most important line of inquiry I hope you’ll sit with as a writer: Can I trust myself enough to stand by my work, no matter what the critics say?

As always, I’m here for you. Reach out to me if you need me. And send me news of your world anyway.

Quotations from Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, May 28, 1934, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (Scribner, 1981).

Dear reader, I said yes

Many of you know I’ve been writing a memoir for ten years. Many of you know I’ve been trying to land the plane for the last two years. Maybe you’ve even watched me circle above in my brain while we’re on the ground getting into shenanigans. And if you’re a writer, you know it’s 50% about putting your ass in the seat and 50% about whatever’s keeping you from putting your ass in the seat.

Last time I spent a day on the end of my book, I cried the entire time. Back in the day, when I was becoming a young professor and living with my grandmother while I recovered from a freak accident (you’ll read about it in my memoir when I land the plane), and the ensuing doctor bill debt, I’d take a bath at the end of the day, and she’d say, “You shovel shit today?”

Having raised three boys who became men in construction and sanitation, she understood why her sons needed long, hot showers when they came home from work. But her granddaughter, who had landed the cushy white-collar work as a professor, not so much.

“I don’t expect you to understand this, Nanny,” I’d begin, “but sometimes I do shovel shit.”

Those of you who write hard truths you must excavate know exactly what I’m talking about, even if my grandmother didn’t. And here’s what you may not know: I took last winter hard. I wondered whether the world cares about children, books, or writers. I wondered what every writer wonders: will anyone care about my story when I finish it? My memoir features more than one near-and-dear-to-my-heart girl who wasn’t safe in her own childhood.

Around then, Michael G. Neece reached out.

If you don’t know him, he’s the King of Kindness, the epitome of his brand’s promise. I was lucky to be his writing coach on his first book, In Kind, which he wrote in about a year despite multiple personal challenges along the way. And, well, occupational hazard, he and I became friends.

Michael & Clementina co-taught and imagined his next book in Portugal, April 2024

A lot of my friends like the vivacious, high-energy version of me. Last winter I tried something that scares me: when they asked, I told them the truth about my despair. When I like people, I don’t want them to leave. But I guess that’s the advantage of losing people you love: you realize a performance prison is worse than losing the ones who only love the easy version of you.

“I’m not feeling so hot,” I said in the late winter, early spring of 2026, when Michael asked how I was feeling. 

Michael listened. Michael told me he cared. He convinced me the world cares. Then he said he had proof and told me what he was working on. Then he asked me to join.

My first thought was: Will saying yes take me away from my own work?

Dear reader, I said yes. Because here I was telling myself women couldn’t do humanism alone anymore; we needed more men to collaborate with us. And then Michael showed up.

Did I manifest him? Wait. Is this my heroine’s journey? The allies and helpers do arrive. He’s out there doing what he does, and I’m doing what I do, and… oh, we’re allies!

The doubt came back. The anthology has a format, set by the publisher (who I’ve since come to adore), and my story would share the page with bullet-pointed strategy. There would be launch plans. I’d have to market. This isn’t the straight-up literary memoir I’ve committed myself to for a decade. Then I realized my doubt was masquerading as perfectionism. Hello, gremlin, my old friend. I see you’ve come to talk with me again.

Then I met the co-authors. As I learned their stories and what they’re doing with their lives, I saw that none of them is letting fear or complacency get the better of them. I got to work on stories like the ones written by Fortuna Ludmir, Kevin Huntting, and Jennifer White. You guys, I hit the new-colleague jackpot. Wait until you read about what these people do, what they’ve done, who they are. I didn’t know it, but I’d said yes to a whole group of people who empower me. No one writes alone. I say it all the time. Turns out I needed to feel it too. And Michael’s right: if we want to live in a kinder world, we’re going to have to build it ourselves. That’s what this book is about.

So, yes, I’m a co-author of Our Future Is Kind®: The Ultimate Guide to Making a Difference, and it comes out November 13, World Kindness Day. Alongside twenty-five humans I’m getting to know and respect—activists, speakers, healers, and teachers from all over the world—I’m answering the same question: How do we build a kind future?

My chapter, “Our Future Is Kind, Conscious, and Consenting: Cultivating the Courage to Write Our Way There,” brings together all aspects of my work. If you’ve been part of this community for a while, some of it will feel familiar. Some of it might surprise you. And I write about something I haven’t talked about publicly before—it’ll explain one reason why being visible, being seen, and even writing often feel tinged with danger for me. 

You’ll get the literary memoir soon, I promise. Maybe this is my way of putting a toe in the water and finding out I won’t die from telling the truth of my experience. So far, saying yes has sent rewards my way: new allies, colleagues, and experiences. Dear reader, you’re part of it.

And I could really use your support. If I can count on you to be an early reader and Amazon reviewer, sign up here: https://www.ourfutureiskind.com/earlyreaders. That link goes to the publisher handling this, so drop me a line and let me know we’re in this together. I’ll be eternally grateful. You may have heard me say it takes a village to raise a Clementina. Thanks for being part of mine.

Clementina

P.S. Our Future Is Kind®

Dear Summer: On Vulnerability, Letting Go, and Writing Your Life

Dear summer,

Please stay.

It's Labor Day while I write you. All over the land, there are still coolers stocked with ice, beach towels drying on railings, and ripe tomatoes falling off the vines. My eyes are smarting, burning, and tearing from the sunscreen I applied to my face this morning. Crickets serenade me through my open windows. It's still warm enough that I don't mind my coffee going cold while I figure out what I want to say.

I hope I'll get outside in the sunshine, but I can already feel equally powerful forces pulling me forward. This practice that's always here for me: Writing.

This last weekend, I had one foot in the loose, unstructured pace of summer — Friday night I said yes to a spontaneous invitation to an outdoor concert and sleepover with my second cousin Tammi, and when Sheryl Crow (she opened for Tedeschi Trucks) asked, "Whoever said freedom was free?" the question resonated with me.

Getting freer has cost me money, relationships, and work; And, I've never been happier or more me. I have writing to thank for that, largely. And the friends and family who've stuck by me while I've grown.

Saturday, I danced barefoot in the grass at my cousin Damien's 50th.

And then Sunday, much to my surprise, I declined an offer to go to the beach, which meant I was going to miss the last day of a summer staple — hangin' at the beach with one of my best friends, Rachel, which often looks like this:

Cheers!

I could feel it, my soul already stepping into the deep September light, which is slant, as Emily Dickinson would have it: a little more serious and singing with the lure of new beginnings, my boys' return to school, and me putting my butt in the seat and finishing my own book.

The business-owner-mom anxiety hit hard as I hurriedly adjusted my focus to fall. The birthday package I need to shuffle off to Buffalo, the chinos and white shirts my youngest needs me to get and iron, the fridge I need to stock for the week. The class I get to try to fill by Thursday. Code-switching isn't always as easy or as cool as it sounds.

Meanwhile, I reflect on the very first version of my love letter to summer — the original draft.

Dear Summer, it's always been you.

Charming, perhaps with an air of flattery. Not risking anything, though. No skin in the game.

So this summer, I revised it. Now that I accept and continue to heal my abandonment issues and try to be more vulnerable, less attached, I added two words: please stay. (That's the line I opened this letter with — now you know where it came from.) Knowing full well summer will leave me anyway. That isn't the point. We can still play full out. We can still leave each other better than we were before.

Maybe vestiges of the guarded me remain. Maybe that's what saying no to the beach yesterday was really about: me leaving before I’m left. This summer was the epitome of short and bittersweet loves. So much happened I never-ever want to forget: My youngest's graduation and our trip to Maryland, the pool we booked on Swimply…our lazy afternoon lounge in it. The smell of sunscreen and ripe mangoes. My oldest son coming home from college and buying and cooking me fish à la Fjord, unprompted. My stay at Scilla's pondhouse. The way her friend Amber became my friend. Getting rejected by the NYTimes—on my birthday. Consequently sharing said piece with my summer session of Write Your Life to show them what great readers and editors they’d become. Realizing I was trying to do too much (mind you, a writer friend—thanks Ali—had told me this before; I wasn’t ready to hear it) and, at the same time, hadn't revealed enough of what was truly important. The consequent vulnerability hangover. My stay at Southampton Writers Conference. The way you could hear a pin drop when I read the opening to the book I’ve been determined to finish for too long (who's judging? who's counting?) at open mic night. The surprise I felt that the bit I read, I’d worked and reworked so often I didn’t think it was possible, I’d be flooded with raw, genuine emotion until there it was, coming up from my heart with no chance of getting stuck in my throat because I was reading to a live crowd. The way my voice will probably never crack again the way it did then. The way, when I finished, the MC yelled out, "Can anybody get this woman a book deal?" The respect I got afterward. It wasn’t a perfect performance; that’s what made it so powerful. The sense of community and friendship I felt there.

And the hollow afterward. Maybe it was fear or procrastination; maybe it was wanting to share the joy of this long-awaited expansion with a partner; maybe it was the ever-human desire to love and be loved. I broke my year of hermitage by dipping my toe back into the dating pool. My call was well written, clear, and specific — in fact, I originally drafted it as a hundred-word entry for The Cut's personals column, in the old-fashioned classified-ad style. I fancied the concept as retro and vintage; the writing challenge real, so I wrote the following, determined to send it until I read their privacy policy and thought better of it. So instead, threw it up on an app promising to be different from the others, and now I’m throwing it up here because this season is about me owning all of me in all my human vulnerability:

Exquisitely sensitive native New Yorker living in Westchester (52 F) seeks mature, emotionally intelligent (Taurus, Scorpio, Pisces, Capricorn) man. Loves sunshine, good books, beaches, great conversation, laughter, an unhurried pace, and if you're a dog lover, you know what I mean when I say, a full butt wag ;) Would like to retire my Hella-Tuff armor and co-create the second half of life with inspiration and grace. Need presence, time, touch, lots of water, and an empathetic partner who's all in. You are kind, generous, protective, and wholeheartedly believe — no matter what you've been through — that big love is real, possible, and coming soon to a theater near you. Oh, yeah, and that you deserve it, too.

To my surprise, in two instances, there were a third and fourth callback. Ultimately, neither landed the part, which is a blessing for all parties concerned because, truth be told, they were fine actors. They’ll be perfect in an entirely different role than the one I’d described in my call. I’m so grateful that my powers of discernment, my willingness to stand for what I want, and some hard truths I’ve had to accept about me are stronger than ever. Thanks again, writing!

All of it — the wins, the losses, the leaving — became the compost for one more rewrite and this third revision of my letter to Summer.

Dear Summer, it's always been you. And it’s always been me too. I finally realize what your leaving has been trying to teach me all along: Soft sunrise palettes, roses as big as my head and fragrant as England, bare-skin-in-hot-sun-giving toasted coconut notes, all the salty watermelon, fierce orange sunsets, fireworks, dancing so hard, barefoot, on my birthday I broke my toe, those slow kisses replete with faces in hands, the clear night pocked with stars, the misty one’s fog making a room around us; they all live in me, all year round, always. My skin is dewy with the proof of it.

I'd ask you to stay summer, but I'd be a fool.

Write your life, folks, you'll never regret it. At J. Anderson's, we wrapped summer session last week. And this Thursday, Write Your Life Like a Page Turner returns to Anderson's Bookshop — our third session, and if the last two are any indication, this one is going to surprise you, too.

Here's what I mean. My students are so thrilled with it, so satisfied with what's happening, that most of them are in for a third go. And a few weeks ago, the brilliantly talented photographer Jane Sikorski (www.janesikorskiphotography.com) came in to take photos.

After the shoot, Jane told me she hadn't expected my teaching to feel so therapeutic—and I realized I should say so more often. This isn't a class where you learn techniques for good writing and go home unchanged. You heal. You grow. You embrace the creativity that’s your birthright. Sometimes, I joke that I'm not a therapist, "but I play one on TV," and I realize that joke doesn’t serve you or me.

I haven't wanted to take the therapeutic aspect lightly. I have the utmost respect for certified therapists — I've probably invested more in my own therapy than anything else — and I encourage my students and memoir writers to simultaneously be in therapy if they're excavating hard things. And I do think I need to come more front and center with the therapeutic aspects of my work.

That's the whole premise of The Clementina Collective, where no one writes alone. We figure it out together — the hard bits, the ones you're not sure you should write, or if anyone will care if you do — and it turns out that's not just good pedagogy; it's good for you.

📖 SAVE YOUR SEAT — Write Your Life

• What: A 6-week course in craft and voice — structure, tension, scene, and the deeper work of writing without apology

• When: Thursdays, 11:00 AM–12:30 PM, starting Thu 9/10 and running through October 15th. Mark your calendar to block the 15th for at least a double session–it’s sharing day! 

• Where: J. Anderson's Bookshop, Larchmont

• Investment: $375

• Invite a friend: This one fills fast—so get your butt in a seat, or tag someone who's been sitting on a story you know needs to come out.

Whether you've got a manuscript you've been working on for a decade or you've never let anyone read a sentence you've written, I created this course for you. We'll work on craft — structure, tension, scene, the stuff that turns "here's what happened to me" into something a reader can't put down — and we'll also do the less visible work: my inquiries require self-reflection; with my support, you'll stop apologizing for your own story, stop apologizing for yourself. Take up space on the page, in the room at Anderson's, and in your life.

See you Thursday. I can't wait.

Questions? Email me at clementina@clementinacollective.com.

Write Your Life — Summer Session Open Enrollment

Hi Loves,

Last Thursday, we wrapped the spring session of Write Your Life at J. Anderson’s Bookshop — and I’m still a little emotional about it.

I’ve been teaching writing since 1998. I’ve read more student work than I ever bothered to count — sometimes the same pages more than once: first submission, revisions, in whatever form my final ask takes, and during workshop shares. By the time the last session rolls around, I have a good idea what’s coming.

And then, last Thursday, I was moved to tears.

First, some backstory.

Over six weeks, we covered a lot of territory. We worked our way through the essential craft elements of compelling personal narrative: story arcs and emotional movement, unforgettable first sentences, active agency — learning where we hide in our own prose and how to come out — the discipline of delay, scene versus summary, and rendering the real people in our stories with nuance and complexity.

But a syllabus is just a container. What happened inside the people using it was something else.

We wrote scenes we thought were necessary, then rewrote them when we discovered we were hiding. We learned to withhold — to let a reader feel something before they’re told what it is. We talked honestly about overcoming the victim narrative: not as a judgment, but as a craft challenge. We asked hard questions about the difference between telling the truth and building a narrative identity around it. And perhaps most importantly, we learned to sit with inquiry.

We learned to get comfortable with letting our questions be our guides into the unknown.

That right there is why I can’t get enough of this sport — that’s right, I just called writing a sport. Because we think nothing of enrolling our children in sports so they can learn the upsides to competition, fairness, teamwork, and how to lose well — but where do we go to learn how to live this life when we can’t possibly know what’s going to happen next?

The blank page has open arms for that.

Before our final session, I asked everyone to choose a piece they were proud of, revise it further, and cut it down to somewhere between a page and a half and three pages.

Real writing happens on the cutting room floor

I know I didn’t make up this turn of phrase — versions of it abound in the film world. On Thursday, I watched my writers learn what it means, in action.

Some writers cut 200 words. Some cut 400. Some cut closer to 600. Some cut more.

Every single piece became more powerful for it.

That’s the thing about excess — whether it’s explanation, apology, or over-contextualization — it doesn’t just slow the reader down. It obscures what’s true. When writers removed the cushioning, what remained had more grace and more force. The humor landed harder. The grief moved freely from one heart to another. Moments that had been buried announced themselves like the badass proclamations they were born to be.

And then there was the being together…the alchemy that can only happen in community. 

I’d read and edited some of these pieces three or four times already. And sitting in the room together — I laughed. I cried. I exhaled. So did everyone else.

I felt the particular satisfaction of watching these writers discover the impact of their stories in real time. Six weeks earlier, these same people had wondered whether they belonged in the class, whether anyone would care about what they had to say — whether they had anything to say at all.

Ah, yeah, that last one…it’s not a thing.

Which brings me to this summer.

Write Your Life is returning for a new session — and enrollment is now open.

Thursdays, July 30 – September 3

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

J. Anderson’s Bookshop, Larchmont

Investment: $375

Limited to 12 writers — 6 spots are already taken. If you’re interested, please don’t wait.

Whether you’re sitting on a half-finished memoir, writing essays for the first time, or carrying a story you haven’t yet found the words for — this course is built for you. We’ll work through the craft elements that close the gap between lived experience and compelling narrative. You’ll leave with revised pages, new tools, and writers who know your work. And especially because it’s summer, we’re going to have some fun!

A note onhow I show up in your inbox

Since I founded The Clementina Collective in 2013, I’ve gotten as much business training as I can afford. Some of it has been genuinely useful. Some of it has disgusted me.

The part that disgusts me: the aggressive, extractive, coercive approaches to marketing that treat potential students like targets to be converted rather than people with their own wisdom about what they need. In the past, this aversion has kept me from marketing at all. And that’s no way to bring people the powerful medicine I’m offering. So as part of my own growth, I’ve decided I’m going to market — my way.

Here’s my promise: I’ll let you know when something is available. I’ll tell you honestly what it is and what it isn’t. I’ll remind you (because I mean to do things I really want to do all the time and forget). And then I’ll trust you. Students who get the most from me know what they want, they trust me to deliver it, and I don’t have to beg, badger, or manufacture urgency to earn their yes. Consent is a core value of mine. 

I see this as part of a larger way I want to lead — a different way of doing business on the other side of the crucible the world is in right now, the silver lining of the slime. Thanks for being here while I figure out how to do it. And for proving, just by showing up, that another way is possible. 

Know someone who’s ready, willing, and able?

If you know someone who will benefit from my work — a friend sitting on a story, a colleague who’s been talking about writing for years, anyone carrying something they haven’t yet put on the page — please forward this email, write a warm intro, or just ask me to reach out and set up a call. The right people find this class at the right time. You might be the reason someone does. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

None of us do anything great alone. And, I always say — it takes a village to raise a Clementina. Thanks for being my village.

Ready to claim your spot? [CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT]

Email me directly at clementina@clementinacollective.com. The class is small by design and more than half full.

I hope to see you there.

With love,

Clementina

The Clementina Collective

clementinacollective.com

An Inordinate Amount

An Inordinate Amount

I can listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates talk about writing all day. When I saw this part of the video the first time, something clicked — and sharpened. "I always consider the entire process about failure," Ta-Nehisi Coates says in this 2013 Atlantic video. "And I think that's the reason why more people don't write."

An inordinate amount of failure is required, he says. He’s not talking about the bad days or the blocks, the first draft or the suffering, he’s talking about the process of doing it, of actually writing.

For teaching purposes, I streamlined what I’d take away: Iterative failure.

Writing is a process of iterative failure.

Imagine that, failure a non negotiable prerequisite to great writing. Wanna be a writer? You’re gonna have to make friends with failure. I already knew it from experience, but somehow watching him gave me permission to sum it up in a neat little — for their own good — grenade I can toss at clients and students when the moment arises.

They've usually got to stop and think about it. Then their expressions open. You mean I'm doing it "right," even though this sucks?

Damn straight. I throw away at least half of what I write. It was another guess until my research into other writers confirmed that, too.

To be clear, the "fail fast" model isn’t new; many of us have practiced it in business, design, or perhaps, if you're lucky, life.

Don't have the luxury of failure? Me neither, though I've failed at plenty anyway, and when I look back now I can say with certainty I don't wish I hadn't failed as much as I wish I'd done it faster and with more confidence.

I'm still not good at the fast fail, or any fail really, but I continue to do it anyway—whoa, bye-bye 22-year marriage. Toward the end, I knew I'd been in a years-long divorce — but only when it was over did a Facebook memory throw me the data. A photo of me and my friend Sabina, making hearts at the camera, both of our smiles full throttle. What you, or anyone who laid their eyes on that photo, don't know is how she and I got together that day.

I’d called her from my driveway after my then husband delivered our marriage's death blow in one insincere sentence: "I wouldn't blame you if you had an affair."

“I’m headed to a rave in Brooklyn,” she said, “come with.”

From there, I spent nine years trying to save my marriage. Trying not to fail, in the slowest, most impossible way imaginable. I need the practice writing gives me to fail, get better at it, and dare I say, welcome it?

Meanwhile, I get the focus, the safety, for a time, to work out myself, with me. Editing gives me practice fixing mistakes, making better choices, and the reassurance that no matter what I have to blow up or let go of, whatever needs to die, I can handle it as long as I’m willing to grieve. And try something different.

From there, I can always make something beautiful in “The End.”

Besides, while I'm still drafting, I have the illusion of safety and control. And writing is such a great medium for that hard-to-find combination: safety + control + failure. You almost never get safety and control while you fail in real life.

How bout them apples?

We're in week three of Write Your Life as a Page-Turner, my six-week course at J. Anderson's Bookshop in Larchmont. Last week, I threw the grenade. This week, I get to watch what survives.

What am I seeing? writers aren't just revising first sentences anymore. Whole openings are coming down. What's going up in their place? More truth, more honesty, more of the actual person on the page.

Between week two and week three — something has given — it’s called interiority.

I'm already seeing better writing, and I suspect by Thursday, I'll see the writers. Wholly.

That's what iterative failure does when you let it. It doesn't just improve your drafts; it allows you to be more open out there in the world.

Toss the grenade into your own work. Who and what survives? What thrives? The practice gives you the space to find the parts of you that are still alive beyond the wreckage of your life.

Let one of those parts of you drop me a note at clementina@clementinacollective.com— maybe you write, still breathing in the subject line — and let me know wassup.

Always love hearing from you, Collective. Write on.

I almost didn't write this

The blog post you didn't get was supposed to be delivered on or around International Women's Day.

I didn't finish it. I didn't have the heart. I didn't feel as positive as I sounded.

Winter has been brutal — and I don't just mean the weather. The Epstein files. The wars. The daily erosion of human decency and care. I've been thinking about you, sitting with what I wanted to say, and struggling to find the will to say it when the world keeps making the case that what I care most deeply about — protecting children, honoring the earth, speaking and writing the truth — doesn't matter.

Add to that, seasonal depression is real, and so is being so sensitive that you can feel other people's feelings. Some of what makes me good at this work — the attunement to other people's feelings — also means I absorb the world's grief. And I think we’re all trying to balance being good global citizens and protecting ourselves in a historical moment that is utterly out of balance. 

Noticing my funk, a dear friend insisted I spend a few days at her beachfront condo in Florida. I got lucky beyond measure — 84 degrees and sunny the entire time. Three perfect sunsets. A phenomenal host. Two books I’ve been wanting to read for the longest. And somewhere in all of that, I realized I could keep going. I'm taking you with me.

So I'm back in the saddle, riding this fire-horse year into the sunset, starting with a fantastic collaboration with J. Anderson’s bookstore in Larchmont, NY. So you’ll need to be kinda local for that, and if you’re bummed you’re not…shoot me a note inquiring about my online classes.

I did revisit what I started writing for International Women's Day, and I'll get a version of it to you in good time — I promise.

Meanwhile, here's a link to the J. Anderson’s collaboration. Please read it, share it with anyone who might be interested (thank you!), and by all means write back to tell me how you're doing. (I LOVE it when ya’ll do that💕)

Sending big love — even if my heart feels a little broken rn. Hey, maybe that's where the light gets out.

Every Writer Needs to Get Comfortable Becoming the Villain in Someone Else's Story

You can't free your voice and keep everyone comfortable. It doesn't work that way.

The moment you tell your truth—the real one, not the sanitized version that keeps the peace—someone's going to cast you as the villain in their story. The ungrateful one. The disloyal one. The one who "changed,"  "went too far," or "should have known better."

Good. You're on your way to becoming a real writer and your own person.

Writers who transform their lives are willing to be misunderstood. They stop performing emotional CPR on other people's comfort and start breathing life into their truth.

Think about Harley Quinn from Batman. Brilliant psychiatrist. Respected professional. Then she falls, hard and messy, into her own chaos—and Gotham loses its mind. She goes from Dr. Harleen Quinzel to Public Enemy, and she does it with theatrical flair, zero apologies, and a baseball bat.

Now, I'm not saying you need to commit felonies (please don't). Though I have been known to pack a Louisville Slugger ever since I traded in the story that someone would save me (persistent default narrative for many of us) for knowing that the only one coming to save me is the next version of myself.

And though I fought it for a long time, choosing myself has meant becoming the villain in other people's stories. It was uncomfortable at first. And, ultimately, it’s one of the most liberating moves I’ve ever made. 

Like Harley, many of us have intentions to help, to heal, to be good. We follow the rules, even the ones that were never made with us in mind. We manage feelings. We keep our ugly truths locked up because we're terrified of what happens when we let them out. 

And then one day—maybe it's a betrayal, exhaustion, or the crimes against humanity—we can’t hide from the truth anymore.

The stories we aren't supposed to tell. The memories we were supposed to forget. The version of events that makes it clear the thing we've been told to ignore—the wound, the pattern, the truth, the blatant misogyny —is real, and it will get worse unless we confront it. 

Fragile egos, angry outbursts, all-out wars aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. 

We can go on the defensive, never ends well, or we can see it as an opportunity to seize this moment as the permission we've been waiting for: we can own it.

Becoming the villain in someone else’s story doesn’t mean you’re cruel or reckless. Just remember this simple truth: The people who need us silent will always rewrite us dangerous when we speak. When either path is dangerous, will you take the one that leads to the greater good?

Here's why it's worth it:

Truth is only threatening to people who need the lie. When you write what actually happened—not the version that preserves family myths—you disrupt carefully constructed narratives. Family systems theory teaches us that secrets keep dysfunctional systems intact. When you refuse to write the truth to protect someone's reputation, you're not just abandoning yourself—you're maintaining the conditions that allowed the harm in the first place. The people invested in false stories will cast you as the villain to protect themselves. 

Silence is self-abandonment—and it's making you sick. Research on self-concept clarity shows that people who live in alignment with their internal values have lower anxiety, better emotional regulation, and a stronger sense of purpose. Every time you don't say or write the thing because of how they'll feel, you're choosing their comfort over your integrity. That disconnect between your inner truth and outer performance dysregulates your nervous system. Being the "villain" who speaks up is actually the path to better health and more capacity. 

Your story belongs to you—ethically and experientially. The truth is a powerful defense, both legally and morally. When you write what actually happened, you're not violating anyone's rights. You're claiming your own. Living in alignment with your values—telling the truth about your life—strengthens your emotional resilience and psychological well-being.

The "villain" label is a manipulation tactic. Calling someone a villain for telling the truth is a classic DARVO move (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). It's designed to make YOU responsible for THEIR discomfort with being exposed. Recognizing this pattern is liberating—once you see it, the label loses its power. You're not the villain. You're the truth-teller they're trying to silence.

Your truth will make someone uncomfortable. Your memoir will hurt someone's feelings. Your essay will contradict someone's version of events. Your success will threaten someone's narrative about who you're supposed to be. It may even force them to confront who they think they are, and believe me, it'll be easier for them to cast you as the villain than to take accountability for the ways they've failed you.

Write it anyway. By all means, write it responsibly. Write it respectfully. Harley refused to shrink. You shouldn’t either.

These are not times to shrink, especially not for people committed to misunderstanding you. 

Feel free to reach out if there’s anything I can do to support you on your journey. You can reach me at clementina@clementinacollective.com

Evolution isn’t Instantaneous, but writing a Book Might Be the Next Best Thing

“Your voice is always there for you. I promise.”

Everyone loves a good glow-up story — the dramatic before-and-after that photographs and videos love. The tease, wouldn't you love to know where I got that glow? The marketing-ready reveal, the successful book launch, the numbers, the categories, the awards.

But here's the truth: the public glow-up is only possible after you've done the work. That's why they say it takes ten years to become an overnight success.

The transformation people see? It's real. But you need to create and tend to it long before anyone's watching.

Once upon a time, I didn't want my own story. In my darkest moments, sometimes I still don't. Blasphemy, I know. But I promised to tell you the hard truths. And, that’s one a lot of writers don’t want to admit.

What’s harder than writing? The daily practice of becoming the non-judgmental witness to my own life. Add to it, radical self-acceptance and self-love. And then, working to change what isn’t working for me.

Powerful shifts rarely announce themselves. They begin in the unseen moments, like when you're writing that book no one has seen or read yet. You've completed enough drafts—and changed your life accordingly —and you’ve yet to launch or publish.

Maybe you're still reckoning with yourself, and it's taking up all your bandwidth to transform your story into something you can live with. That’s okay.

More and more, I recognize my own transformation in quiet. The blessing of birdsong—the way it calms and reminds me that when I'm present and still, peace is all around me, even if the world, according to my reels, is a dumpster fire. And this is where I can’t help but share the wisdom of my own Nonna, the original Clementina, who always reminded me, “It’s not the world, it’s the people in it.”

The birds didn’t stop singing years ago when I began the long and arduous process of divorce; I had no capacity to hear them. It’s a cruel irony to realize that when my nervous system needed them the most, they could’ve sang their little hearts out, and I wouldn’t have heard them over the five-alarm fire of my fears.

Your voice is the same way. And I promise you it is always there for you. You just need to show up for it. Breathe. Listen.

Actively finishing my book means slowly rebuilding my relationship with my truth. It means consistently turning down or muting what’s outside while I work. For readers, it will be a nearly 300-page book they can order from Amazon with a click and devour in a few days. For me, it's been ten years in the making, and it's changed me entirely. You might want to prepare for that...no matter what impact your writing has on the world, the biggest and most profound change starts with you and your commitment to the work, your devotion to the truth.

Lin-Manuel Miranda said, “To engender empathy and create a world using only words is the closest thing we have to magic.” I agree, the intimacy I've shared with authors I'll likely never meet will never cease to amaze me. It's why I believe in books and the people who write them so wholeheartedly. Each is a reminder that we can begin again with the story we wouldn't choose if we knew better, or at all, at least not consciously.

Remember, I told you I once didn’t want my own story? The meaning I’m determined to make of it, the questions I’m determined to answer, have become my lighthouse, my North Star, the reason I press forward, especially on days the world seems full of darkness. I put my head down and summon my own light.

When I left my old life three years ago, my top priorities were learning to trust myself to create a new reality for my boys and me, one with fewer restraints and more possibilities. I kept writing when I could, wishing I could write more or that the whole process would move faster. Had I a magic wand, I might have wished myself to the finish line. And, like any chaos that ensues from a genie in a bottle or Big Anthony in charge of Strega Nonna's pasta pot, I wouldn't have been ready. I didn't yet have the bandwidth or a repaired enough nervous system to handle the public-facing "glow up."

To say it another way, in my impatience, I'd have made the wrong wish at the wrong time. I needed time to change how I listened, who I listened to, and who had access to me (spoiler alert: fewer and fewer people), as I learned how to expand my faith and trust myself.

You can't rush the transformation. And despite what our culture goes to great lengths to make us believe, there are many experiences more valuable than efficiency and speed. Writing a book can be transformative because it forces you to face yourself on the page. From there, you have two choices: abort your story or evolve. The latter is no quick fix.

Which brings me to an underlying question inherent in this post: Does transformation have to be visible to count?

No. And, you're often hidden for protection.

One day, out in my old garden, I saw something strange hanging from the back deck. When I got closer, I realized it was a cocoon; inside, a moth caterpillar was breaking down while nature protected it from harsh weather and predators. You cannot hasten a moth from a cocoon without killing it, nor bring someone to consciousness they’re not ready for without confusion, not even yourself.

The glow-up people see—claiming your voice, launching your book, the confidence—that's real. But it's not where the work happens. It happens in the pages no one reads while you break yourself down and rebuild into someone who can finally advocate for the truth in those pages.

You can't skip the breaking down. You can't rush the rebuilding. The caterpillar doesn't emerge from the cocoon the same creature it was when it went in—it liquefies, reorganizes at a cellular level, and becomes something entirely new. That's what writing your story does when you choose devotion. Your story doesn't document your transformation. It IS your transformation.

So yeah, follow your North Star. You glowing beneath it is what happens when you stop hiding from yourself long enough to write it down—and keep writing, draft after draft, until the metamorphosis is complete.

Only then do you get your wings.

Only then can you fly.