Re: Detailed Hyper-realities: The Conlang Instinct

> Do you consider making up a language, your Skerre, as a kind of musical
> composition?
No.  Skerre and compositions both involve the same creative process that I
have utilized to create a million things in my life, but Skerre is not a
kind of composition in my mind.
>What are the features that they share in common?
Now this is the question that I have pondered on and off all day.  The
similarities, at least in my mind, aren't many, but here's some ideas.  Both
composition and conlanging have caused me to embark on a journey to learn
more about them and their related fields.  Both tend to structured
analytically, but that's probably more a a bi-product of the way I think.
In terms of the sound of my language and my compositions, I try to look for
something that sounds "cool," which tends towards the bizarre, but again
that seems to be my personality coming out, and not some intrinsic
properties of these two endeavors.   One difference that I notice is that
with composing is that I consider it a relatively short-term project-one
that I put a lot of energy into when I'm working on it, but then I step
back, and see the mistakes, and move on since there will be more
compositions.  But I treat conlanging very differently.  With Skerre, I see
it as one project, and if something is wrong, I change it, but it is a
project that doesn't end, nor do I really want it to end.  Perhaps those of
you with multiple conlangs treat conlanging like I treat composing, but the
whole Skerre endeavor is so personal that I refuse to end it like I stop
working on a composition.
So Sally, I hope that sort of answers your question, and to the rest of you,
I hope you find this mildly interesting, since I feel one of the strengths
of this listserv is our willingness to share our various experiences  with
languages.
-Doug