Try to be the only one!

That's the theme of a lesson I've been teaching all this week in the Japanese Junior High School. And even though I've said the words at least 10 times for the week, I didn't heed them. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Only a few minutes ago, I uploaded a post about starting a new Wednesday edition: Write on! Wednesday. Then, after labelling the post, I decided to do a web search and see if I could find it. The results? An entire blog called writeonwednesday! I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to search it before.

I considered pulling down and editing the post, but I decided against it because there’s a lesson to be learned here. I doubt there are any authors who don’t have access to the internet these days, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and not make a sweeping generalisation. Most writers have access to the internet. We can search for books with similar titles, writers with similar names, even stories with similar themes. And we should. This can help us make ourselves and our product more identifiable. You don’t want to put all the hard work in, only to have your masterpiece mistaken for someone else’s craft.

With respect to my own specific mess, I’ve decided to change the name of the Wednesday blog to Write Away! Wednesday. And yes, I searched it this time! :)