Writing on Roids

Last week Alex Rodriguez played the “young and stupid” card to help explain his decision to use performance enhancing drugs. This may come as a shock to you the innocent reader but I was “young and stupid” once too. That is no longer true of course, now, I’m simply old and, well, just not very clever.

Times were different during my young and stupid period. Steroids had been around for awhile but were used mainly by East German Olympians, power weight lifters, and possibly by someone who would eventually become the governor of California. It is believed that these substances didn’t make their way into baseball until the mid 1980’s. I have no idea when they found their way into writing circles. But there is little doubt that some authors have dabbled with the juice. How else to explain James Patterson’s ability to produce a book seemingly on a daily basis?

During this time I was floundering about, churning out the occasional paragraph and like Rodriguez, “under pressure to succeed.” I admit it was tempting to get some help. After all if steroids could help an athlete, why not a writer? I imagined my fingers flying across the keys of my typewriter at the speed of light and page after page of brilliant words flowing freely. I liked the image but unfortunately, the flying fingers in the image were attached to a body which also included an enlarged head, the possibility of breasts, and the ever popular shrunken testicles. And even if I could have overlooked the charming side effects, I really had no steroid connections and more importantly no available cousin to perform the injections. In the end my steroid idea was a short lived one.

So there you have it. For the record, I have never used performance enhancing drugs of any kind. Of course, A-Rod told Katie Couric the same thing and since then we’ve learned he was lying. The lesson here just might be to avoid Katie Couric . I’m sure Sarah Palin wishes she had done so but that’s another story. I should have no trouble avoiding Ms. Couric as there is a greater chance of California dropping into the ocean than of my being interviewed by CBS news. On the other hand, I did meet Meredith Viera once so possibly buying soon-to-be-beachfront land in Nevada might not be such a bad move.

I now find myself concerned that Congress will soon take an interest in the possible use of steroids by writers. I worry about this mostly because this does not seem to be the best use of their time. Perhaps a little less time spent listening to Barry Bonds lie would have left more time to focus on pesky little issues like the economy and the war in Iraq. On the other hand it’s not every day you get to meet the all time home run king even if he did cheat his way to the crown.

And I suppose in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that occasionally I’ve had a bit too much caffeine or perhaps a tad more alcohol than I should but neither seems to have had any effect on the quality or quantity of words spewing forth from my brain. The truth is that for me, I get great satisfaction from creating things with no artificial help whatsoever. It’s a pity that wasn’t enough for A-Rod and the others.