On Frogs and Creative Desicions

So let's talk about frogs and writing.

I recently talked to one of my closest friends about Turning Curse, and how I knew made some "mistakes," and I'm not talking about typos (though I know I made them too. Curse me for being human and naturally flawed). So let's shed some light on these mistakes, and explain why they exist if I know they are mistakes.

The first and foremost one is "Frogs don't have fingers." Frogs have toes and legs. No fingers. No hands. Yet I constantly used fingers and hands when writing from a certain frog's point of view. I did this because it thought it would be a mouthful to say, "He outstretched his right, front leg" instead of "He outstretched his right hand."  I would like to think most readers, whether they are frog experts or not, know what I am trying to convey. Therefore, even though it is technically incorrect to use hands and fingers when talking about a frog, for the sake simpler sentences, and hopefully easier to understand sentences too, I am willing to make this mistake.

Another one is gritting/grinding teeth. Frogs have teeth, but only on the top of their mouths. Because their isn't a lower set of teeth it is inaccurate to say, frogs grit/grind their teeth, yet once again a certain frog is special. Like the previous paragraph stated, the decision to use such phrases came from wanting to remain simple and trusting the reader. The idea was to show the frog doing a similar motion to gritting or grinding his teeth. Imagine every time he did it if I wrote, "He moves his teeth in a grinding motion--not that he was really grinding them, because he had only his top row of teeth. His top teeth were really brushing his bottom lip."

I'm sure there are still people out there who will cry, "Mistake! Inaccurate!" and honestly, let them. They're correct. If it makes them throw the book at a wall or rant to all who will listen about how some author made an anthropomorphic frog...well, anthropomorphic, then that's what they choose to do with their time. As for my time, I got to get back to work editing some novels.