A J-Land Survey Thingy

1) What is your name? (what you go by on here or who you are known as)
Karen Funk Blocher, or just Karen. 

2) Where are you from?
Originally DeWitt, NY, but grew up in Manlius, NY.  I've been in Tucson, AZ since 1986.

3) When did you make your (first) journal, here in J-land?
Tuesday, March 23, 2004. I posted five entries that first day!  The Blogger one followed in June 12th, 2004 (one entry that day, three the next), and the LiveJournal began June 19th, 2004 (three entries that day). 

4) What was/is the name of your journal? (Meaning your first journal ever on here)
Musings from Mâvarin.

5) What meaning does the title of it have?
The Musings part was supposed to mean that the entries would be 1) whatever I happened to be thinking about and 2) whatever I was inspired to write. (These are two different things.)  Too bad the term Musings was already a cliché in blogdom by then.  The "from Mâvarin" part was to indicate that a lot of the writing would be related to my Mâvarin books or characters.  In fact, the characters would be the ones doing a lot of the musing, in first person fiction entries.  And what is Mâvarin?  It's "the country in my mind," as my license plate holder says, the fictional country where Rani and Carli and Cathma all live.  The name means "Sun-River-Land."

6) What types of things do you share in your journal?
Let's see.  I've shared short fiction, serial fiction, poetry, a poll or two, holiday trivia, memes, essays and rants on political and religious and ethical subjects, pure diary stuff, photos, nonsense, entries about Tucson weather, plants and animals, travel, music, science fiction, fantasy, history, midcentury modern furniture and decor, old toys and dolls, my dogs, work, school, movies, books, writing, the creative process, and time travel, and even an HTML tutorial or two.  I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, but you get the idea.

7) What do you appreciate most about your readers?
I love reading a comment that someone liked an entry, especially the fiction.  That means a lot to me, helps to keep me going.  I also appreciate constructive criticism, as long as it's not too crushing, and hearing what elements of a story work for people.  I love knowing that I'm not just talking to myself.  Most of all, I love that a number of readers have become my friends.  Virtual party at Karen's computer! 

8) When you are journal browsing, what is it that gets your attention about another's journal?
Positive things that get my attention: good photos, humor, engaging writing.  Negative things that get my attention: poor spelling, punctuation or grammar, or saying nasty things about other people, especially other journalers.  Even if it's in jest, put-downs, teasing, gripes, accusations or name-calling (except for political satire, in small doses) make me want to click away from a journal, and never come back. I'm a little more tolerant of the mistakes in English, but not much.  If mistakes jump out at me in every sentence, or if the person uses all lower case, I won't bother to read any further.

9) What journal gives you the best laugh?
Carly, Tilly, and Mrs. L are all very funny, and Chuck and Paul are amusing. There are others, but I'm less familiar with them.

10) What journal inspires you the most, gets you THINKING about things?
Maryanne's journal does that, as does Michael's, as does Carly's, as does Becky's. I can't pick just one.

11) What journal is most eye appealing to you? (colors, graphics, pics, and set up)
Honestly, I don't notice the set-up that much, especially because I usually go to the new entry rather than the whole journal.  I generally prefer a photo rather than art in a sidebar (but either is better than nothing),and a light color in the body of the journal. 

12) What J-landers have you connected to as friends as well as readers?
Carly and Becky are the main ones for me, but also Chuck, Paul, Sam, Michael and others.
Any J-Land shout outs you'd like to share?
Cheers to everyone who nominated and voted in the VIVI awards - even if you didn't vote for me personally.  (But I'm very glad that some of you did!)

13) What kinda things would you like to see in the J-land community as far as writing styles, subjects, and or topics?
More of the same, really, but with more literacy where that quality is lacking, and fewer personal attacks on people who happen to disagree about religion or politics.

14) What would you like AOL to do to improve its journals?
Spell check would help a lot, not just for people who don't spell well, but also for the typo-prone (like me!).  There should be more customizing options for the template, more room in the About Me and journal description areas, and the font size glitch (12 point appearing as 10 point) really should have been fixed by now.

15) Top 5 journals you visit (links included so we can visit them as well if public):     
Alphabetically:
Alphawoman's Blog
By the Way
Ellipsis
Jersey Girl
Where Life Takes You
(but there are at least three others I would have crammed onto this list if I could have!)

16) What do you like about keeping a journal?
I love talking to readers, sharing my stories and my rants, good days and bad, whatever is on my mind.  I used to do that in fanzines, but this is more immediate, more wide-open in what I can write about, and the feedback is practically instantaneous sometimes. I like that it keeps me writing, and that the schedule I've imposed on myself has forced me to write a bunch of new fiction.  Oh, and I've really enjoyed messing around with digital cameras.  I don't like that it eats up all my free time, and I don't get anything else done!

Person you got this Survey from their journal name & link if available.
I found the survey in (sometimes)photoblog.

Links to your journals:

Not much point in linking from Musings to Musings, and that's my only AOL-J.  But here are the non-AOL ones:

Messages from Mâvarin (fiction entries)

Mâvarin & Other Inspirations (LJ)

St. Michael's blog

St. Michael's Arts blog

I like this survey. If you take it, leave your link here: Journey through J-Land -Survey.

Karen