A different strategy for conlang design

Another thread (Starting a translation) triggered a
random neuron in my brain to fire which lead to this
idea for creating a conlang.

Begin with a small book, perhaps even a children's
book or a "young adult" novel like the Hardy Boys or
Nancy Drew, (Or maybe Harry Potter!) and starting at
page one, paragraph one, just write a translation into
some previously non-existant conlang, right off the
top of your head, inventing words and grammatical
principles as you go along.  Don't back track, just
keep forging ahead, straight through the whole book.

Then when you've finished translating the entire book
you can go back to the beginning and "correct" the
translation to be consistent with the grammar and
vocabulary you finally settled on by the time you
reached the end of the book.

That method would insure you'd covered the most
important vocabulary and grammatical structures, and
would also insure that the conlang was reasonably
practical.

What I like about the apporach is that where conlangs
are concerned I, personally, have more fun "doing"
them than thinking about or planning them.  More
systematic or methodical conlangers would probably
find this approach too chaotic and unstructured.  But
I think it would be fun to try.

--gary

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