I asked a small group of people – all writers and editors – to give me a list of things they couldn’t do without. Being writers, and with imposed or self-imposed deadlines, they sent their lists to me anyway. I’d like to think it’s because they like me or found this interesting. However, I know that the actual reason is that writers will grab onto just about anything that will help them procrastinate a bit. Even the hyper-disciplined writers are good at this (I’m a genius at it). So here’s the list in no particular order with initials in place of names:
JJ:
Sticky notes and Google
John Denver
Hearts of Space (my editing music)
Editing clients
Good, comfy pens
Writer friends, near and far
SM:
Medicare, Social Security, IBM, Apple, the Wright brothers, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, JFK., The Beatles, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, Robert Heinlein, my parents (!), my late sister Beth, whoever-the-hell-my-real-estate-agent was in 1979, my wives (past and present) and someone yet to be revealed to me
DD:
Eighteen pills a day
BJ:
Number one on my list: email. Number two, coffee!
RG:
Two things I try to use every day, and wouldn’t want to do without, are — humor, snuggling, cussing, warm water, refrigeration, people who rise above the petty, JJ’s editing help, avocados, grilled fish tacos from Santana’s, good books . . . whoops, was that more than two? And…
Jazz
Powerful female vocalists
Italian food
Mexican food
Humor
Kindness
Love of my wife
Watching dogs
Watching cats
My kid and grandkids
Health
Friends
BS
A roof over my head and adequate food to eat
Good health
Good friends, most of them writers, all of them neat, witty folks
Books
Internet
Tuesday night dinners and Friday breakfasts
A working car
SQ
The running hugs of my children as I come through the door
The connection my iPhone and iPad give me to boundless information (and entertainment)
The implacable support of my mom
My wife and all that she does for our family
Belief that with personal effort, I can make tomorrow better than today
So looking at the list, it’s easy to pick out the primary universal thing: People. Even individuals who close themselves off in front of keyboards in quiet rooms need connections with people. There’s nothing new in that, of course, but it was an interesting exercise to see what people, who often are by nature and their career choice seen to be loners, still need.
Words + Dreams 
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