WD Editors Are Writers Too: Meet Adrienne Crezo, Managing Editor of Writer’s Digest

All the editors on Writer’s Digest staff aren’t just 9-5 editors, we are also writers and storytellers—which is why we are so passionate about writing and publishing. “WD Editors Are Writers Too” is a column on this blog to give you a sneak peek at the folks who lead the WD community—including their quirks, what inspires them and what they are writing outside of the Writer’s Digest world. Today’s pick is Writer's Digest Managing Editor Adrienne Crezo, who is the newest member of the WD team. (Hopefully she knows that the newest member sponsors Donut Fridays.)

I joined Writer’s Digest in: February 2014.

I knew I wanted to be an editor when: I realized that proofreading cereal boxes was a thing people were paid to do, and there I was doing it for free over my mini-wheats. I started in corporate copy editing and copy writing, then moved to writing and editing nonfiction online, blogging, and then to writing magazine pieces and editing novels. When I was young, I never considered a future in writing or editing; I love to learn and talk about things I've learned, and writing was born of that for me. It's a tool that facilitates my only real interest, which is to know more today than I did yesterday. Obviously, nonfiction is important to me, but there's an entire human history's worth of learning to be found in fiction.

The book that inspires me most is: There are too many books to call one in particular "most inspiring." Any well-organized, well-written collection makes me happy. I love short stories above all else—Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders, Alice Munro are all big names, but any that test boundaries and experiment with form are going to be well loved. Matt Bell is great, as is Aryn Kyle. I'll also list Lindsay Hunter, who I adore; Anne Valente; Noy Holland; Shawn Vestal, whose GODFORSAKEN IDAHO was incredible; and Catherynne Valente, who is a master of beautiful things. Raymond Carver can't be neglected here because I think he taught a certain section of a generation how to write, and for that I love him (almost) the most.

Favorite moment as a writer/editor: When you've finished a project and can see the difference in quality between the raw, unwieldy thing you started with and the polished, beautiful thing you've found inside of it—that moment is deeply satisfying. I try to find it again and again.

Worst moment as a writer/editor: Any time I have a typo on social media. That's embarrassing, and it happens with alarming regularity.

Any background info you’d like to share: I'm not good at moderation. If I'm doing something, I will do it until I can't: working, sleeping, running, reading, eating guacamole. Unfortunately, this includes procrastinating, which I am excellent at doing and terrible at avoiding. I once lost a spelling bee in grade school because my word was "radar" and everyone else in line had much harder words like "vermillion" and "expedite," and so I said, "Why—" and was promptly cut off by the moderator, who thought I was attempting to spell radar with a Y. I'm still angry about this. That was my bee, Principal Abbot. MINE.

Personal writing project I’m currently working on: A writer never talks about her work-in-progress (or this one doesn't, anyway).

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer's Digest and author of the popular gift bookOh Boy, You're Having a Girl: A Dad's Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

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