Re: conlanging and journaling

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:13:30 -0500, Amanda Babcock Furrow <langs@...>
wrote:

>When I was conlanging in private, I didn't feel at all self-conscious about
>my naive phonology or occasional hokey, teenage-angst coinages.  Once I
>found this list (so many years ago now!), that changed.  Now I frequently
>feel that my conlanging comfort zone - my instincts about how my language
>should be, and the result thereof - is somehow inferior to folks with less
>personal, more well-researched (be it a priori or a posteriori) conlangs.
>I find myself wishing I could make a Tepa or Tokana, or a Wenedyk or
>Thrjotrunn (did I spell that right?)  Or a Kelen, or... (I could go on...)
Yeah. Bingo. Bullseye. That's one of the feelings that I was
unable or unwilling to put into words.

Social comparison. The feeling of incompetence that I get
when I compare my own garden to the pictures in the
gardening magazines.

Amanda, please don't feel bad about having a personal lang
that you can actually use and pronounce. That's success, not
failure. Maybe it would help to fantasize about people
who've made exotic phonemic inventories -- imagine them
getting sore throats and aching tongues after trying to
speak their languages. Maybe in extreme cases they break
their tongue and have to live with their tongue in a cast
for several weeks. :)

But seriously, if we keep working on the art and music
analogy maybe we can formulate some antidotes for these
feelings. Visual arts include sketching, drawing, watercolor/
acrylic/ oil painting, and sculpture, with various styles
and schools in each medium.

Painters who do abstracts or have a streamlined style
wouldn't feel bad about not doing photo-realism... would
they? I don't know any painters but I imagine some of them
would be quite proud of their work and vigorous about
describing the advantages of their genre of art.

Of course your instincts are correct. It's YOUR brain.
You are the only one who knows what will work well in
your brain and bring linguific joy to you.

---
Richard K. Harrison of Florida

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