Simple vs. Simplistic: In a Glass Grimmly and Me

Stretching out far, far into the distance was a line of towering white cliffs, undulating in and out before an endless expanse of the purest, deepest blue she could ever have imagined. The white cliffs, a thousand feet high if they were an inch, were topped with green tufts of high grass. Below the cliffs, between them and the pure blue sky, ran a long, smooth cloud beach, against which the blue of the sky gently broke like waves. (In a Glass Grimmly, by Adam Gidwitz, p. 83)

sorta, kinda like this...

Once upon a time, I too went to a writer's conference. For an extra $10 (give or take) I entered the first chapter of one of my novels into a contest. There were several categories I could enter, including fantasy, science fiction, mystery, women's lit, historical...and children's. Now I'm not going to go into a long irritated rant about how YA and Children managed to get lumped into one category. Ridiculous, IMO. Ridiculous enough that I didn't think to enter my solidly YA entry into the children's category, but into the fantasy category. Now, the lovely thing about that extra $10 was that my first chapter would be critiqued by three people, one of whom was guaranteed to be an actual agent or editor who worked in the genre.

Well, it would have been lovely, except that the first critique, while not unkind, managed to cut me to the quick. I can't tell you why it hurt so bad. I'm sure there were extenuating circumstances, like jet lag and having been rejected by my dream editor that self-same day. I didn't keep it, so I can't quote it word for word, but it said something like this:  "This writing is too simplistic for this category--it seems like this would have been a better fit for the YA contest."

In one fell swoop, he had insulted not only my writing style but my intelligence AND my reading choices. I, who had always prided myself on my scintillating vocabulary, and who had worked so hard at improving my sentence structure, had been judged simplistic. Did that also mean that the books I chose to read somehow required less intelligence than "grown-up" books? (Well, frankly, yes. Sometimes. But not usually!)

In the days since that writing conference, another genre has gained in popularity: middle grade. In A Glass Grimmly, which I quoted at the start, is a middle grade book. It is filled with words like: precipitously, cerulean, primordial, reverberated, gelatinous, darkling and viscera (don't ask). Some of the sentences are simple, and some are complex and wonderful.

 To state it simplistically, YA and middle grade are not defined by the complexity of the writing. Rather, they are defined by the ages of the characters. Therefore, complex books like The Book Thief and The Fault In Our Stars are considered YA, right alongside Twilight, because they have teenage characters. Trisha wrote a great post about the evolving dynamics of YA here.  Middle grade books generally have younger characters, and there are some policies about romance (specifically the lack thereof.) The topics covered in both categories are often deep and complex. For example, In a Glass Grimmly tackles topics like: Are strength and courage the same thing? Are parents always good? If people do not accept you, are you a worthwhile person? And the one I personally struggle with: My children love this book, but should they really be reading it if it contains sentences like: 

The last one convulsed on the floor, screaming in pain, as blood bubbled up out of his body like a hot spring and flowed all over the floor in crimson waves, eventually lapping up against the throne's legs like water against rocks on a beach. (p. 191) FYI--I skipped this particular sentence when we read it out loud.

So, if I disagree with my anonymous critiquer's assertion that YA writing is by definition less complicated than adult writing, then what is left is his allegation that my writing is simplistic. It probably is. I dislike writing that thinks too much about itself. I enjoy straightforward writing, suffused with occasional gorgeous, complex descriptions that propel the story forward. I write the same way, except that I might not have mastered the "gorgeous, complex descriptions that propel the story forward" bit. I can keep working on that, but now, at the end of this blog post, I realize that it seems silly to try and make my writing more complicated just for complication's sake. But let's rename it. I absolutely prefer the word simple over the word simplistic. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I write YA.

So, my writing style aside, what do you think?