Google

Okay, I admit it. At least every other month I Google my own name. My son laughed when I mentioned it the other night. I suppose it makes me sound like one of those attention seeking fools who needs to think they are important. Wait that is me…LOL. However, I have a perfectly logical reason for checking on my name.

Once upon a time, before I got the brilliant idea to have a “day job”,  I wrote full-time and actually sold a couple hundred articles and craft ideas each year, mostly to parenting and education publications. One day I was shopping in one of those “teacher stores” with my daughter, when I opened a book and saw one of my ideas. Only problem was that I hadn’t sold it to that particular publisher. I flipped through the book and found no less than three of my ideas. After I got home I went through my contracts, found I had sold the ideas to the parent company of the one that published the book and, deep within the fine print, had given them the right to do exactly what they had done- use them again in one of their other publications. Needless to say, I’ve read subsequent contracts more carefully. And that brings me around to why I Google my own name, and sometimes also the titles of my most recent articles. I want to find out if my work is floating around in cyberspace. And it is.

I found that a Japanese student referenced one of my gardening articles in some sort of paper. I would have been more excited if I had been able to read more than just my name and the title of the article. J I also found out that one of the articles I sold this summer is online, even though I thought it was only going to be in the print version. Found out a chapter I wrote for a book is not only in print, but most of the chapter is online. Odd to sit at the computer and read it when I haven’t received my own copy yet. Saw a reference to an article I wrote nearly a ago- still floating around.

Being a writer, even a part-time writer, makes me a bit paranoid about being misread, misunderstood, or misquoted. I’m not sure I have much to say most of the time, but when I do I want to know who is reading it. These days it could be anyone, anywhere. So…I Google my own name.