The life of a freelance editor can be lonely. But Adrienne Kerr takes solace in the quiet comfort of working from home, away from the busy publishing houses on the bustling streets of Toronto. Having been raised on a farm a few hours outside the city, the hectic, non-stop energy of the downtown core can be overwhelming.
Adrienne made the move to Toronto over twenty years ago when she began her master’s program in English Literature at the University of Toronto. Her first experience outside of the world of academia was as a bookseller at Nicholas Hoare, and from there, she moved onwards to Penguin, before their merger with Random House. Throughout her time in the publishing industry, Adrienne has worked in sales, marketing, and editing. She has acquired and edited over thirty books that have made it to bestsellers lists.
In working closely as an editor to so many authors, Adrienne sees creativity in not only the writing process, but in its refining process as well. Her focus is getting rid of the useless and the unfulfilling—not only in the manuscripts she works with, but also in other aspects of her life. Life is too short to read crappy books or keep up with all the celebrity gossip. She seeks gratification and works towards creating a life she loves.
I first met Adrienne when I was a student of hers at Ryerson University, where she teaches a publishing course through the Chang School of Continuing Education. I witnessed her softness and composure firsthand; she speaks carefully, laughs often, and is quick to share her personal insights to help her students better understand the intricacies of the publishing industry. She is open and unafraid to voice her opinion—she wants everyone to be able to do their best. She takes a similar approach to editing; openness and honesty with authors goes a long way towards working on so many bestsellers. Thanks to this, Adrienne has built up a strong reputation as an editor.
The White Wall Review was fortunate enough to sit down and talk with Adrienne about her experiences and processes as a freelance editor, and what it means to find your home in your industry.
White Wall Review: How did you get into the publishing industry?
Adrienne Kerr: I started working as a bookseller in a bookstore in Toronto about twenty years ago to pursue a master’s degree in English at UofT, and I really loved working with books. I really liked the conversations that I had with people about books, and I soon discovered that I was more interested in working in the book industry than just pursuing a career in academia. So, my career in publishing really starts with a minimum wage-paying job, you know, just working every day in a bookstore.
From there, it took me a long time to move out of retail and kind of make that jump into office work. I avoided it for as long as I could because I was pretty sure an office job was not what I wanted.
I started applying for positions within larger companies, publishing houses, larger retail operations, just to get off the bookselling floor to start making larger decisions about the kind of books being stocked. And it was a really hard transition for me, just because office culture kills your soul! But the great thing was that being in the book industry, there’s always new books coming down the pipeline. So it’s the kind of industry where you would never be bored.
WWR: Were you always interested in working in fiction?
AK: When I think about what I read when I was a little kid, I was all over Dean Koontz, and Stephen King as a teenager, and you can’t get any more hardcore genre than that, right? And then I did my English degrees and I became, I guess, in air quotes, a “sophisticated reader.” But I really do find that I keep getting drawn into genre fiction.
The very best writing is crisp, with a tight plot, and great characterization. You find these things in genre fiction just as much as you find them in literary fiction. I would say you get better momentum, you get better tension, and you get, sometimes, a more satisfying experience when you’re working within genre conventions.
Now that I work exclusively in fiction for my freelance business, when I read for pleasure, it is always non-fiction. I feel like I can’t turn off the inner editor when I’m reading novels anymore.
WWR: Do you not feel the need to edit when you read non-fiction?
AK: My editorial impulses are not as strong when I’m reading non-fiction because I’ve trained my brain over the course of the last three years when I’ve just been working on manuscripts in my freelance business. I’m developing new grooves that insist upon parsing grammar and structure when I’m reading fiction and it’s become very, very hard to turn off. I’m really happy I have this refuge in non-fiction where my critical faculties give it a rest.
Would you ever want to write your own piece and have it published?
That’s something that I have been dancing around for a long time. And I think, the older I get, the more I examine my own creative impulses and why and how I’ve ended up precisely where I am. I’m not entirely sure that I have something remarkable to say, to share with the rest of the world. However, the impulse to write is strong within me and it’s something I have curtailed, I think because I feel so much more comfortable reading other people’s stories. I feel like editing is kind of a creative act, but it’s definitely a secondary act. You’re responding to something that’s already on the page.
This life that I’ve created for myself is the closest way that I can think of right now to enjoy a creative life, without actually having to create, myself, and bear the weight of that huge responsibility. But it doesn’t stop my dad from asking every time I go to visit, “When are you going to write a book instead of working on other people’s?”
WWR: Do you ever reach out to potential clients?
AK: They tend to reach out to me. I get referrals from other clients, I get referrals from literary agents, I get some work from the publishers themselves. I don’t have to do marketing, thank God, because clearly it’s not a strength. Basically, I found that having my website and my contacts in the business keep me afloat.
WWR: What does an average day look like for you?
AK: I like to do my correspondence in the morning. I invite my clients to bounce ideas off me. And then I try and block off a good chunk of the afternoon for a sustained session of reading or editing and break it up with walking my dog to clear my head, then come back and do it again. I really, really appreciate the peace and quiet of working from home and not having to commute, not losing an hour in transit twice a day. And of course, like everyone, I hate the TTC!
WWR: How many manuscripts will you have going at any given time?
AK: I edit one manuscript at a time. But I have multiple clients revising edits at the same time. That’s the toughest part of the job, managing a schedule so that redrafts and edits aren’t all coming in at the same time. As a freelancer, you never want to turn down a potential client. At the same time, you want to do right by the clients that you do have, and that means not spreading yourself too thin. That’s my biggest struggle.
WWR: What’s your favourite part about editing?
AK: It’s the intimacy of communicating ideas. It’s really kind of a strange relationship, the author-editor relationship, because you start to learn how another person’s mind works and you begin to wonder about how your own mind works. It’s an interesting way to get to know another human being. But also I really appreciate the distance and the peace that I get from other people, just by working with books, you know, that antisocial part of me rises up every once in a while.
WWR: If you could work anywhere in the world, would you choose to stay in Toronto or go somewhere else?
AK: I would not stay in Toronto, but I would only move two hours east. I would go back to my parent’s farm and continue editing in the landscape of my childhood…I can do my job absolutely anywhere…Or, and I have done this when I occasionally take vacations, I would just go and sit on a beach in Jamaica with manuscripts. So yeah, it would be either Jamaica, or my family farm.
WWR: Do you think working in Toronto has influenced you at all?
AK: In the publishing industry, this is the best place to be. So simply living in Toronto has given me proximity to the best in the business in this country. From that perspective, yes. I do want to say that I feel like I was really heavily influenced by my rural childhood, and that having lived in both urban and rural environments makes me feel like I can talk to just about anybody. This city has given me access to these great minds and to this career that I’ve carved out for myself. But living in different environments, surrounded by different types of people, that’s all to the good.
WWR: What’s your favourite book or series?
AK: I think the most influential book for me in terms of fiction is A. S. Byatt’s Possession, which was published in 1990 and won the Booker Prize all those years ago. It’s kind of like a gothic romance about two scholars researching two Victorian poets who have this illicit love affair, and it combines satire about the academic world with a forbidden love story and it’s very learned and atmospheric and wonderful. It’s this big, shaggy beast of a book and I absolutely loved it. I read it when I was in high school, and I just decided that I have to work in a world where people like A. S. Byatt exist! These are my people, this is my tribe. This is my world.
Besides that, I really like the beauty and simplicity of E. B. White—I think he’s marvellous.
WWR: Do you reread books?
AK: I definitely do! I’ve got a few that I read over and over again. One is a novel by Anne Tyler called If Morning Ever Comes. I read it probably every year, mostly when I have insomnia and I feel like I’m the only person in the world and I’m full of despair. I read that book and I just don’t feel alone anymore. I love it; I find it so companionable.
There’s another book that I reread. It’s a short story: H. G. Wells, “The Door in the Wall.” It’s a phenomenal short story. It’s about lost opportunity. Once you recognize where beauty is, what your purpose is, it is your responsibility to find and follow and keep it in sight.
I feel like the books, they chose me, as opposed to the other way around. But at the same time, if I’m reading a new book and it sucks, I do not feel obligated to finish it. Unless of course, I’m contractually obligated. Life is too short.
WWR: That seems like a really good way to live.
AK: You get to determine where your attention goes. We all have this little black magical box in our hands and we can look up anything, we can endlessly distract ourselves and actually making a conscious choice not to visit The Daily Mail, or check updates on celebrity gossip, that’s a good thing! So as long as you are aware of where your attention goes, you can consciously decide where to spend it. It’s too simple, too easy to overlook. But it will come back to you, usually when you’re older and you have less and less time left—you just have less tolerance for crap! It’s very freeing!
WWR: What advice would you give to someone starting in the publishing industry?
AK: I hate the idea of sending people out to go network at industry events. That kind of thing makes my soul crumble and die. I was so terrible about that stuff and that’s what everyone told me to do. I think, what you have to do, is find a way to make your mark, introduce yourself to people, in a way that doesn’t make you want to curl up and die. One of the things you can do is volunteer at an organization, so that you actually have a job, a useful purpose, instead of just crashing a party. I find that if I have a purpose, if I’m useful in some way, I feel like I deserve to be in that room, like I belong there, and then it’s easier for me to have a conversation and figure out what people are doing. Networking is hugely important, but I find that if you are volunteering and being helpful, that usefulness can really help you overcome the natural shyness that maybe a lot of booklovers have. Baby steps! It’s hard to break into any industry. But my sense is that if you can do it in a way that doesn’t stress you out…everyone’s path to it is going to be slightly different.