title: The Intentional Writer: Finding the Time, Space, and Inspiration You Need to Write
author:  Erin Bartels 
description: Erin Bartels is an author, a freelance editor, and a copywriter for an independent publishing house in Michigan. A finalist in the 2014 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest, she is a board member for the Capital City Writers Association, a member of the Womens Fiction Writers Association, and the features editor of WFWAs newsletter, Write On. Author of This Elegant Ruinand other stories, Erin blogs regularly at www.ErinBartels.com and speaks at writers conferences. For updates and information on new releases, you can follow her on Twitter @ErinLBartels or find her on Facebook (ErinBartelsAuthor).
zlib_text: ## POISON IN THE NEGATIVE
  
  
  ### Isaac Asimov
  
  
  ––––––––––––––––––––––––––—
  
  
  Yesterday I sat down to write my 321st essay for Fantasy and Science Fiction.
  I called it How High in the Sky and it went swimmingly. I was pleased at the
  ease with which I worked out its construction. It practically wrote itself,
  and I scarcely had to look anything up. I whistled while I worked.
  
  
  And then, when I reached the last page and launched into my climactic
  paragraphs, I thought to myself: Why does this suddenly sound familiar to me?
  Have I ever written an essay like this before?
  
  
  As it happens, I am widely noted as a shy and reserved person of extraordinary
  modesty, but if there is one thing about myself of which Im just a weentsy
  bit proud, it is my phenomenal memory. So I punched my recall button and up on
  my internal display screen came an essay called The Figure of the Farthest.
  Hoping earnestly that my memory had missed fire, I looked it up. It turned out
  to be essay *182, published in th