I got through filling in all of the words that I’d left out–every single one of them–today. Part of that is laying some groundwork, in the event that I’d like to do more work with the language my main character speaks. Nothing I can’t live with.

My main character comes from a culture that has a lot of words for “husband.” Well, that’s because there are a lot of different kinds of husband. One of my other characters–in a not particularly politically correct moment–suggested that every other word in the language means “husband.”

That’s probably not actually true, but I’m sure they have several hundred words for the concept.

And I needed exactly three of those.

So, I’ve been working my way through finding the words. (That’s a nice way of saying “making them up.”)

I figure the language probably has gendered nouns. (How many genders, exactly, I don’t know.) And I came up with the masculine ending. Then, I worked my way through the three types of husband the story actually needs names for. First, you make up the word–something you have a chance of keeping straight in the future–and then you Google it, to make sure it’s not an obscenity in some existing language.

And now, I’m all the way through every single missing word in the manuscript.

There’s enough structure to build onto, if necessary, but still very minimal.

I’m getting there, folks.