Wilbers: Good writers protect team members from harsh critics

• I can’t do it gremlin
• I don’t know what to write about gremlin
• I’m too busy gremlin
• I don’t have big enough chunks of time gremlin
• I got bad writing grades in school gremlin

And the list goes on. If you can’t see yourself in any of these, I’m sure you have one or two gremlins of your own lurking about.

Here are a few writing exercises you can try to send those little critters off into the abyss to which they belong.

1. Set your timer for 5 minutes and complete this thought: The phone rang, and somehow, I knew. I waited until the fourth ring before saying a tentative hello. I dropped the phone like it was a burning coal and began to scream when he told me…
2. Take your current topic and condense it into no less than two words and no more than five. On a blank sheet of paper, put these words in a circle in the center of the page. Then in smaller bubbles that connect directly to the main one, answer who, what, when, where, how, and when. This exercise gives you a visual representation of your topic. It doesn’t matter whether you are working with fiction or non-fiction.
3. Set up a Google alert on your topic. Experiment with keywords until you get the kind of results that will helpful and/or inspiring for your topic. I have quite a few Google alerts on a variety of topics and I find that getting these daily digests inspires and informs me for my current writing topics.
4. Go to your local library. I can get lost for hours in my local library. I peruse the fiction, non-fiction, DVDs, and magazines. I always check out more stuff than I can possibly read in the allotted time and I am always raring to go to get to my own writing.
5. Peruse Amazon books. This has a similar effect as item 4, but can get expensive if you give in to your lusts as I, unfortunately, often do

If you are in the middle of a gremlin invasion, try some or all of these ideas and do let me know how they work for you.

Remember the wise words of Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message. My conclusion is that this formerly fine publication now presents writing for the writing instead of writing for the message.

My purpose here, then, is to urge you to err on the side of simplicity. Engage in the more challenging task of presenting a clear, concise piece of writing, and indeed, the watchword is — more challenging. A truly great writer has learned to hide behind her words as opposed to tramping all over them to boast of great “talent” (not).

Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing

Ugh — Have I ever been shuffling through the dry zone, as in desert, as in nada, zero, zilch for ideas and creativity. Here’s why. I have been doing nothing to nurture my muse: nada, zero zilch. Instead, I have turned on autopilot and focus on going through the motions — in this case — grading motions.

Many writers teach. I am one of those writers. About a year ago, I took up with an online university, and don’t get me wrong, there are things about it I really like. I like designing and delivering my twice weekly, one-hour chats. I like dealing with the students. I DON’T like having 70 students, with 11 papers with 72 hour required grading time, all in 5 weeks. This, I have finally realized, is madness. Well, as is par for the proverbial course, quitting is not an option. Becoming a walking, talking, grading machine is also not an option. What is an option is re-engaging my muse. It’s not like I don’t know how — I know perfectly well how, I just don’t.

How? Get back to basics and do the Zen stuff. For me, the number one Zen is my horse Buzzy. I have allowed poor Buzzy to languish in a field without me for the last year with the ever-to-busy-for-Buzzy excuse. No more. I am going to the barn three, four times a week now, and plunging into the epitome of spirituality for me, which is my riding. I am back on the trail in every way, and things are starting to defrost on this steamy late June day.

For years I’ve sought the world’s best pen. Even as I write this article, I salivate at the thought of such a tool in my hand. My life has been enriched by my many pen odysseys. Through thunder, ice, torrents and blizzards, through mud, sleet, wind and hail…

“We’re on another pen odyssey?” my husband asked in awe one nasty night as we negotiated a foot of snow to go to Staples for a special pen.

You know those big Rubbermaid storage boxes? I have one in my office that’s filled to overflowing with mostly unopened boxes and packages of pens. My children love to go through my stash, exclaiming, “My God, Mom, you could open a store!”

In fact, this year they didn’t have to buy pens or pencils on their annual outing for school-supplies; they hit my Rubbermaid storage bin instead. I suspect I may be harboring one, perhaps two, little pen freaks because sometimes, in the dark of the night, I hear the creak of the cellar stairs as one or the other of my darlings sneaks into my basement office to pore over the pens in private. This is disconcerting because I never know when I may want the one pen with which a child may have chosen to abscond.

When I was in Philadelphia on a recent business trip, I came upon a kiosk that sold only pens. I thought I would burst from excitement! I spent an hour and a half trying pen after pen until I finally narrowed my search to two sleek models. I decided upon one that was heavy, though not too heavy, narrowed to a fine point, and which had a classy tortoise body trimmed in shiny silver and gold. With this substantial instrument in hand, I thought, At last – the perfect pen! The end of an odyssey.

But this was simply not to be. When I got the pen home I found that despite its classy look and feel, its ink coagulated into ugly, gooey balls that smudged as my hand slid across the surface of the writing paper. So, off I went yet again – this time to search for the perfect ink cartridge that would fit perfectly in the barrel of the perfect pen.

Such is the frustration of my pen fetish – finding a body I adore stuffed with abominable ink, or discovering a divine body that feels clunky in hand

Why pens? I often reflect upon this question. Likely it has something to do with the fact that I’m a writer. Even though I do most of my writing on a computer, I often make outlines or draft notes in longhand.

The quest for the perfect pen is an odyssey which began in grammar school when the nuns slapped our fingers with rulers if our pencils strayed beyond the lines of the thin, big-lined paper where we wrote stories about Spot and Dick and Jane.

Unlike many of the other girls in my grade, I lacked the fine graceful penmanship that repeatedly won them weekly penmanship awards. God knows I tried. The nuns made a big deal about perfect penmanship (penpersonship today?). In third and fourth grades it was the over-riding, all-important subject. I never got more than a B-minus.

I’ve had this pen thing for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, a pen and piece of paper provided an escape. I remember long winter evenings curled up in my bedroom surrounded by sheets of yellow, 17-inch legal paper. On those sheets I’d create worlds and stories into which I’d catapult myself, finding particular comfort in stories about being warm, safe, and cozy in small abodes. And I’d write these stories in pen. In those days I was partial to the original BIC clear-bodied pen. And I’d write and write and write, engrossed in the tale, entranced by the feel of writing it.

When BIC Clicks came along I wrote great love sonnets and free-form verse. I relished the feel of the pen and doted upon my improved penmanship while smelling the sweet aroma of lilacs carried on the breezes of warm June evenings and dreaming of my first true love.

Then came college. Four years of blissful writing. In fact, my sweetest college memories encompass long hours of note-taking in classes and libraries, hours upon hours of writing by hand. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy going to professional classes and seminars today is because I can dream and listen away the time while harboring a pen in my hand and writing on and on and on, with no phones ringing or children’s voices pleading or dogs barking.

One day I found Nirvana in the form of a catalog for the International Pen Shop. I knew I was in trouble. I even hid the catalog away for a while thinking (hoping) I might forget about it. This catalog listed pens that cost as much as $1000. When I could stand it no longer, I pulled out that catalog and dreamily lingered over each of its sixty-four pages of pens. Surprisingly, to me, I didn’t salivate over every pen. In fact, there were only three or four I wanted to explore further, and they were moderately priced. Afraid of facing the same old disappointment, I called the company that produced the catalog and asked to speak with someone who knew pens. I was transferred to Ruth, the inside expert.

“Now Ruth,” I began, “I have this thing about pens. I have spent a good part of my life in search of the perfect pen. Here are my requirements…”

I went on to recite my needs list: slim body, fine-point, ink that poured out as smooth as baby lotion (and smelled as good, too). And, moderately priced.

What was moderate?

Less than $50.

How about $60?

Is it really good?

Oh, you just wait! That ink – it’s the best! European made. They know what they’re doing with their pens, those Europeans.

Fine point?

Comes with medium, but for you, dear, we will send it with a fine point ink cartridge.

Sold. And Ruth, thank you.

Drum roll. Was this fine German-made tool indeed the perfect pen? Did this shiny silver-plated instrument satisfy my unrelenting hunger?

It’s visceral. It’s real. I feel like a human being with some small measure of control when I have a pen in my hand, when I’m writing.

The search for the perfect pen can never be over. Because if by some miracle I come across a writing device that satisfies my eternal craving, then I must admit that control is an illusion.

And these days, that feeling of control is ever elusive.

Actually, there are always things to write about, and the issue is really motivation, or rather, lack-there-of. I use the “busy” excuse for it sounds quite respectable and buys me some additional blank pages. I also use the excuse that my well is “dry.” I have nothing to write about. Wrong. I may not have the juices flowing that quench my thirst to create, but I can modify my mode and write more formulaically. I can look out the window and “paint” (words only, please) a picture of the minor mud slide in my back yard courtesy of the latest storm. I can take just one episode in my life and transfer it into words. I can write a letter to the editor about one of the myriad issues roaring about these days. I can, well — you get the idea. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be brilliant. It doesn’t have to be Pulitzer Prize material. It just needs to be — WRITE!!!

Fukushima is now the radioactive Deepwater Horizon of the Pacific.

As I pondered my own online activity, I began to wonder whether the ubiquity of Facebook was on the wane. I am certainly not as rabid about it as I once was, and neither are my two twenty-something children. So, the crux of this post is, first — is Facebook on its downhill slide, and if yes, what is the next iteration in social networking?