how do I do the worksheets writes outside of a for loop?

Old:

$NAME = "BOB";
$worksheet_$NAME->write('A2', "$NAME is here");
[download]

New:

$NAME = "BOB";
$worksheets{$NAME}->write('A2', "$NAME is here");
[download]

BTW, as for why symbolic references should be avoided, see the classic three part series by MJD: part 1 and part 2 and part 3.