On Distractions

This is my cat, Marv.

 

Marv is arguably the worst cat of all time. He yowls at all hours of the day and night, licks himself loudly and continuously, claws the furniture, and jumps up onto my lap at inopportune times. You may be chuckling to yourself, thinking that these are all distinctly cat-like traits and possibly countering that he seems like the best cat of all time. 

Lies.

Marv is the color of a moist dust bunny and has the coordination of a falling branch. He tends to throw up at the exact moment I'm heading out the door, and he has a propensity to pull out large tufts of his own fur and spit them unceremoniously onto our freshly-vacuumed blue carpet. 

Why don't I get rid of this cat? Because I love him, of course.  He was the worst present I ever got, and God love my fiance for surprising me with him. Michael truly had the best of intentions. I had been practically stamping my foot for a cat since we moved into our new house.

I think that Marv is a spectacular of example of the types of distractions writers dread. If the distraction, which I will call Marv from now on, is more than just laziness or an addiction to Facebook, I mean. 

After a while, external interruptions (Marvs) to the creative process start to drive me crazy. Just when I get a brain wave and my fingers finally begin to tap-dance over the keyboard with furious momentum, just when I hinge on crafting what is, without doubt, the greatest sentence of my literary life -- YOOooOOooOOWL! 

And it's gone, ladies and gentlemen. The taut thread snaps and that delicate whisper of the muse is struck dumb. The overwhelming feeling of loss can send me into a brief bout of bloodlust. It's not pretty.

How do you get away from Marvs?