The land
"The land" is the world I construct in my concultures.
Torim, the land, is located in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean.
There are other lands, but I don't use them too much. They're
Lemuria, located in the Indic Ocean, and Mu in the Pacific Ocean.
The most interesting thing, at least for me, is creating for the people
in Torim cultures and languages [in Spanish].
I started "conculturing" (constructing cultures) in 1995, when I saw an
interesting episode from "The Simpsons" (I really love that programme) about
the Stone Masons [in Spanish, the "Magios"] or something similar, and I
wondered "Why can't I create my own religion?", and I decided to create it.
At the begining I didn't know anything about religions (I just knew about
Christianism, and not so much cause I am an atheist).
I started reading about jewish culture, the 'Coran', hinduism, masons, even
some satanism and begining creating "Dwarfism" (in Spanish "Enanismo") -that
sounds like a disease, I know. It started being a monotheist credo, but it
slowly changed into a politheist like, magic related belief. It also started
being some kind of joke (something similar happened with my comics),
but deformed in a complex, serious job.
[an obvious parenthesis: I don't believe in any of my constructed credos!!!!!!
-that's for the ones that think I'm a freak]
In the same year, I was reading an encyclopedia, when I randomly (I don't believe
in luck neither in random, so it might be taken as a contradiction with my atheist
belief, but it's just an expression) found an article about Esperanto. I read it.
Wow! I said, and I wondered something similar: "Why can't I create my own language?".
I started making some rules to my language. It was very simple to learn, very
regular, and of course almost exactly a copy of Spanish and some English. I wasn't
frustrated, but I didn't continue with that job.
Slowly, thanks to the religion creation, I expanded to another fields: I created maps,
measuring units, calendaries, a "Bible", laws and even more than one culture.
It was now 1999, but something still hadn't been created: a language for my culture,
when I remembered the old "Spanish-Esperanto-English" language. I improved it a bit,
put a name for it ("Jatemiko") and as I was a bit 'crazy', made a 2000 term dictionary,
word-by-word.
Was then when the Secret Vice caught me... I started with
that obsession: I had to create more and more languages.
I started creating very flat languages... I didn't knew anything about phonetics,
grammar or syntax, so they were a horrible cypher of Spanish. But I didn't cease:
I studied (extra-officially and by my own, of course) some linguistics, and some
web-pages about conlanging, I learned a lot, and created
new, better languages. By the way, I just create the language rules: phonetic rules,
morphological and syntactical rules, I also create daughter languages from a mother
language; but I don't create the words: that boring (to me) work, is done by a
word generator I created. I don't know what to think. Maybe generating words in
that way makes me be less conlanger than others that create them word by word. I
just try to enjoy what I do, and I enjoy it more creating the dictionaries with a
programme.
Enjoy the life! Try to do fun things, and don't worry too much.