Writing...

 I've been playing with language lately, and coming to understand the definition of “immensely complex.” Before I started, I knew creating one realistic fictional language is terribly difficult. I set out to create half a dozen in full knowledge that I'll need more before I'm satisfied. Each of my species: Elf, Orc, Dwarf, Goblin has a language. But everyone of those is a spread out people, the Goblins most of all, so each of those languages is really a proto-language from which a family of modern languages evolved by the time of the story. In addition, there's the ancient Troll race, whose runic language serves as a proto-language to each of those. Furthermore, there's the much-separated Troll race, which, if it ever plays a part in the story, needs another language using old-troll as the proto-language but developing separately. “Immensely complex” mean anything yet? My admiration for Tolkien grows by the day. I have to admit that a lot of what I'm doing must be rather like a pale imitation of him. Not a happy thought, actually.

Still, about languages, I've had some fun. Norse runic language isn't too bad, their carvings tend to be pretty distinct. I can identify most characters now, although I don't know the words (or even which strings are words – they're not very good about using spaces). That, and Greek and Latin, are going into a blender along with a box of crayons and a ruler to make old troll. For elven, which I perceive had a root language even before contact with old trolls &c., I basically turned some Arabic text sideways, closed my eyes, and made some characters. The result, while odd looking, gave me the beginning of some symbols.

 These symbols, these letters, don't mean anything by themselves. I've begun study of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and discovered that English is a truly remarkable language. We don't actually have 5 vowels and sometimes y, but by pronunciation we have something like fourteen (sixteen if you count Brooklyn). Not only does every character I create need a sound, it needs a name. In reading the IPA book and discovering an extra set of vowels which don't have names, I suddenly have a great respect for “A is for Apple.” Those funny squiggles need names. They need meanings and sounds. And they need to be arranged such that each language fits with the people who'll speak it, but does not exist in a vacuum.

 Let me say this much. Everyone gets a phonetic alphabet, with between fifteen and thirty characters, five to ten vowels, and I'm not playing the “vowels are not a letter” game. There's good reason for this, and it goes back to the ancient history of the world. That's the sort of history that I don't know when I'll ever get to tell in the novel, so I think I'll polish a short story and post it as an addendum. Maybe I'll print an appendix or a Silmarillion that nobody will read.