Critter Notices
[It's Freebie Friday in the Critters Store...]
Critters is 30!
Last November, Critters turned 30 years old! Wow! Thanks so much to all of you, who've made it such a resounding success!
FEATURED BOOK
The Rules of Writing
> Learning to create art--drawn, written, musical--has its rules. You > don't hold the trombone with your toes and play with your nose > (although there's probably someone who can break even those rules and > create something meaningful). The problem with the word "rules" is that it can mean either "mandatory" (as in law) or "customary." "Rules" in art are the latter, but many beginners assume the former when they hear the word "rule," and thus may inappropriately demand compliance by others. I think of art as having "conventions": "A practice or procedure widely observed in a group; a custom". By convention you hold the trombone in your hands, you don't split infinitives, etc. You should learn what the conventions are, but not feel they are Laws, nor demand others follow them. In critiquing, you can, instead, offer your opinion that someone's unconventional usage didn't work for you. (Now, in the "mandatory" sense, computer programming has Rules. If you misplace a semi-colon in a program, it simply doesn't work. :-)
