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?
