Monday, May 31, 2010

Looking for Motivation

Ideas have arrived, and yet I have this problem of getting up early in the morning. Again. It's like exercise. I hate starting, but once I get going it's not so bad. The first few days though... I have the hardest time convincing myself it's worth it. Surely I can get that writing done later in the day, it's Summer. I don't have a job right now, no school to speak of... I can do it during the day, or at night or something, right?

Of course not. While my parents will often retire earlier, my brothers don't, in typical teenager fashion. If I stay up I'll never be able to stand not to hang out with them... the only option is to either wall myself away for the months I write (which will drive me crazy) or I can learn to get up early again. Curses!

In other news, things are a bit better. Somehow I stumbled upon a Language Construction Kit (I make it a link so that I feel very fancy). I think it was something about wanting to make an alphabet for Yavn, and wand'ring round the internet for ideas, up comes a link for said kit. Now I'm obsessed with it. I really should learn another language before I try and create my own (say, finishing up my Italian course, or maybe getting my parents to help me learn Swahili or something), but be that as it may, I've already made up most of my grammar. Right now I'm trying to generate some semi-random words to get some vocabulary, so I can move on to translating and writing and speaking it somewhat to find holes in my grammar rules. I've eliminated or combined some tenses, and I'm hoping that doesn't mess me up terribly. I'll never know until I start using it. I found a handy program that will let me define catagories of letters and then put in patterns that I want, and it'll generate random words based on that. It's quite helpful. It could be as vague as just Consonants and Vowels, or as specific as typing the words yourself. I've got fricatives (M, N, V, F, etc.), vowels (vowels), plosives (P, B, D, T, G, etc.) and approximants (like R and L). Using names I've got so far, I'm generating words from their patterns. I can't replicate the entire dictionary in a day, and I've got to assign each word to an English word. The vocabulary of course will have fewer words than English (English has pretty much the most of any language I know of), but even so I'll need hundreds. I've got about 300 printed off on a sheet for easy reference, but I still have to find the best words to assign them to. Some are more important than others, and I'll probably do those first. Right now I'm picking out some for prepositions, and next I'll probably get nice words for the important ideas and objects in Yavn. Wow. Work.

I have another project to work on writing-wise that should help with world-building yet more. If I could just get work done on it... I'm slotted to start today, and I will do it. I didn't get my rear out of bed this morning? Too bad.

Well, no more procrastinating. Music, writing, work.

Ooh, it generated one that goes "umpyiu." How on earth do I pronounce that?