When writers get published, we tend to pick up a few bad habits (actually, we usually pick up bad habits before we get published). These habits worsen over time, sometimes rising to the level of Writer’s Obsessive-compulsive Disorders (Wods).

Here are a few of the most common writing Wods:

Self-Googling

That just sounds dirty, doesn’t it? Self-Googling is when you set up a Google alert associated with your name. You’ll then get an email alert every time your name gets mentioned on the Worldwide Web. I’ve been Googling my name ever since my series hit the bookstores in ’07.

There’s nothing more gratifying than getting a Google alert that takes you to a positive review you’d known nothing about. Of course, there’s also a downside to Google alerts. Sometimes you get alerted about snarky reviews, the kind you could have gone all year without reading. Google alerts aren’t very “smart” as technology goes, so you can also get deluged by alerts about peoples’ names that are sort of like yours, but not really.

For example, my Google alert goes off every time Kathy Griffin (“My Life on the D-List”) is in the news.

How annoying is that? Let me put it this way–she may be on the D list, but Kathy Griffin gets mentioned on the Web a lot. Every time I get an alert nowadays, my first reaction is to sigh and say, “Dang. What’s that K-G-D woman up to now?”

You can also turn up downright weird stuff that’s posted about you on the Web.

Yesterday, for example, I got an alert about a blog that mentioned me. The blog’s content appeared to be a machine-translation of an interview I gave months ago. Swear to God, the following paragraph is a paste from the blog:

“Kathryn Lilley is a archaic receiver paragraphist who has written pressure disadvantage mystery novels. Her importune in advancement is a paranormal thriller and she blogs at The Kill Zone…I was born a pudgy indulge (9 pounds, 11.5 ounces!). When I was a teen-ager, my parents sent me to a residential eats clinic (read: bulky farm) in Durham, North Carolina.”

I spent some time puzzling over 1) who publishes that blog, 2) how I ended up on it, and 3) What the the heck is a “pudgy indulge”?

This is one mystery that may never be solved.

Checking Amazon numbers

Some writers won’t cop to it, but most of us check our Amazon rankings regularly. Often compulsively.

The problem with Amazon numbers (where the lower your number is, the better), is that they’re incredibly volatile. Amazon rankings bounce around faster than a Wham-O Super Ball.

So instead of compulsively checking my Amazon numbers on the Amazon site, I’ve started compulsively checking them at TitleZ.

TitleZ lets you track your Amazon numbers over time. You can even (pause for dramatic effect) get lifetime averages for your book’s rankings. Best of all, you can compare your book’s rankings to other books. So even when your lifetime numbers are looking bleak, you can always find an acquaintance’s book that is doing worse. Preferably an author you don’t like.

There are other writer’s compulsions. I recently added Blogpulse and Google Trends to my list of must-check daily sites. I won’t even pretend that Google Trends has anything to do with my writing. I simply have to know which search trends are Volcanic!, Spicy!, or Mild, on an hourly basis. Or else I die.

What about you? Do you have any writer’s compulsions/Wods that you can share? I have a book coming out on September 1st, so I’m in the market for a few more.