People like Jeff Goins piss me off. They say things* like:

• Choose yourself
• I started over and it was worth it!
• It takes more than talent, it takes hard work!
• I am fabulous and obviously better than you because I did this thing!
• Being helpful is more important than being clever.

It’s enough to make me want to hire a life coach so I can finally write that novel I’ve been planning to (Mostly True Tales, out May 2012). But Goins’s self assuredness mixed with an everyman voice has prevented me from ranting full bore against his typically helpful writings.

As Goins points out early in his new ebook You Are A Writer, I hate him because I’m envious of his success. I’ve been writing a blog for years now, I’ve been published in magazines both online and off and I have plenty to say—yet here I sit with enough time to review other writers’ work instead of producing my own. But I digress.

I wish I had read this book ten years ago. My time in college was wasted NOT writing, and I can’t help but think how much better I’d be had I taken my writing seriously earlier. Not that I regret transferring from journalism school, but I could have kept writing. Another 3-4 years under my belt would have been fantastic.

Sure, the lessons would have been different. The technology would have been relatively primitive. But the core message, that to be a writer you first need to act like one, stays the same. Writers write. They write when it’s hard and they write when they’re not getting paid. Not because they have to or because someone asks them to, but because it’s a part of who they are and who they want to be.

It’s our job to paint a picture without visual tools. Only by showing the world what it looks like though my eyes do I feel useful, and, if I can say this in the most non-self-aware way possible, complete.

Or I can continue fucking around on Twitter, asking questions on Facebook and discussing my workouts on Google+. Choice is up to me.

*I made up most of these. The ones I didn’t were modified.