by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Anna Clarke Fiddler has a diagnostic word for a draft that is not telling the truth yet: smudgy. When a piece feels vague, she has learned, the writer is usually circling something emotionally difficult and needs support to open it up. That instinct, equal parts editorial precision and patience, is the engine behind Draft Zero: Write the Terrible First Version, her four-week nonfiction workshop at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
Fiddler is an editor and writer with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and critic Vijay Seshadri. She trained at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, was a 2025 writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, and has been recognized by the Flatmancrooked Prize, judged by Mary Karr. As a developmental editor, she has worked with everyone from debut authors to New York Times bestsellers, which is to say she has read a great many terrible first versions and knows what they become.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Anna:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Anna. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Anna Clarke Fiddler: I'm a writer, editor, and visual artist who loves nothing more than listening to and telling stories. I have a deep affection for the absurd and a good laugh, and I'm an unapologetic Francophile who's equally obsessed with Mexico — the energy of Mexico City, the rugged beauty of its Pacific Coast. When I'm not at my desk, you'll find me hiking the trails of Northern California with my family (including a giant Bernedoodle), sketching at a live figure drawing class, hunting for treasures at flea markets and estate sales, or meal planning in my head.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: That getting the story down on paper is the single most important first step. I've built my entire studio practice around exactly this — helping writers break through paralysis, self-criticism, and the trap of perfectionism. We all carry stories worthy of the page, but we have to learn to write them without fear or self-censorship. It's a brave, freeing act. Once the raw material exists, it's amazing to see what you can build from it.
"We all carry stories worthy of the page, but we have to learn to write them without fear or self-censorship. It's a brave, freeing act."
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: The practical tools to overcome that throat-tightening "OMG, a blank white page!" panic. They'll know how to speak to their negative self-talk and finally surrender to the story waiting inside their head.
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Anna Clarke Fiddler: "And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary."
— Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: I've learned that when a draft feels vague or "smudgy," it's usually a sign the writer is circling something emotionally difficult and needs support to open it up. I had a student writing about the exact moment she realized her mother was developing Alzheimer's. Her first draft was so stylized and comedic that the workshop didn't even register what was actually happening underneath. Once we talked about her real intent, the room made space for her to strip away the armor. With time and support, the essay became something breathtaking. She reached the terrifying heart of the piece — her grief and fear around a parent aging — and realized her humor, in this case, was masking the story rather than serving it.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, but a small, specific technique.
Anna Clarke Fiddler: A surprising, left-of-field simile. I love comparisons you've never heard before — images so specific they instantly reframe how a reader sees the physical world.
Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Tiny, precise, deeply observant. It teaches you how to sit inside a quiet emotional moment instead of hiding behind a loud plot — and in doing so, it reveals both historical intricacies and our shared humanity.
Sentences that specific start as raw material in a first draft. Spend four Monday evenings on Zoom producing yours.
Enroll in Draft Zero →Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: "Write what you know." Use it as a baseline, but don't stop there. Let yourself feel wild curiosity about a different pocket of history, a place you've never set foot in. Imagination and empathy are powerful engines — and no matter how far you travel in fiction, glimpses of your true self will show up on the page anyway. You're not confined to writing about your childhood hometown, your first love, or your elementary school principal.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Anna Clarke Fiddler: ...you'll likely meet someone in the room who stays in your life for years. You'll share a specific kind of creative vulnerability that only gets forged in a workshop. Hold onto those relationships — they become your future beta readers, your accountability lifelines, your lifelong book recommenders.
"You'll likely meet someone in the room who stays in your life for years. You'll share a specific kind of creative vulnerability that only gets forged in a workshop."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: The World According to Garp by John Irving. I read it as a teenager, just as I was starting to take my own writing seriously, and it blew the doors off my understanding of what a book could do — compulsively readable, sweeping, hilarious, absurd, frightening, and overtly sexual, all at once. It hooked me, and it's why I still chase that kind of immersive reader journey in my own work.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe? In one sentence, not a paragraph.
Anna Clarke Fiddler: Deeply empathetic and full of humor — but I'll always give it to you straight and push you to the next level.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Anna Clarke Fiddler: I'm a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States!
Empathetic, funny, and willing to give it to you straight: that combination is exactly what a first draft requires from the person reading it. Fiddler is not promising that your terrible first version will be good. She is promising that it will exist, that you will have finished something real, and that you will know where to take it next. Four Monday evenings, one complete Draft Zero, and a permanent set of tools for answering back the voice that says not yet. Bring the story you have been circling for years.
No experience required. Just the willingness to show up on Mondays and write the version nobody else has to see yet.
Save Your Seat in Draft Zero →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
