Okay how does this hold your attention? 
Set up - Eve has followed her spirit guide to the top of St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Eve had crept out onto the open walkway that wrapped around the top of St Peter’s dome, the cold wind whipping at her clothes.  The claustrophobic corkscrew climb had been bad enough, but Rome’s skyline separated by a thin hand railing had her frozen.  She hated heights.  A raven flew by, passing uncomfortably close to Eve’s shoulder, and then perched --inches from her death grip on the balustrade. Something round in its beak.

Good -- did her spirit guide show her to the place in 'real time'? Or is she retracing her footsteps, say from a past dream? I'm curious as to the *how* she got there. Obviously, it's something big, to have her climbing all those steps in spite of her fear of heights -- which, by the way, I'd like bit more of a sensory cue from her about it, rather than just being told she was afraid of heights. Does her stomach flip? Do her palms sweat, making the grip on that balustrade all the more tenuous? Is she hit with vertigo? How does her fear of heights manifest itself?  Me, I feel my stomach drop when I (stupidly!) look down from a high ledge.

Also, I played a bit with the structure of that second to last sentence -- making the raven's appearance and landing a bit smoother.  Not too sure about the description of what the raven has in its mouth, though. My first thought upon seeing "round" was "coin" or "button." Maybe a touch more description of what's in its beak? Does it shine? glisten?

Mortified by the drop of hundreds of feet, Eve tightened her hold and swiped her free hand at the bird. “Shoo.  Go away!”  It opened its mouth, dropping its treasure, but wasn’t intimidated.  “I said—go away!”  She swept her free hand again at raven and it flew up into the air.  It flapped its wings, talons extended, threatening, diving towards her.  She released the railing and stumbled back against the dome, dodging the raven’s attack.  She landed hard on all fours, the raven’s treasure spinning on the narrow walkway.  It slowed and then lay, the bloody eyeball staring up at her.

Eve scrambled away, clawing at the dome’s wall.  Her hands smeared on something wet and warm that covered her palms—a trickle of fresh blood flowed down the dome curve.  The wind whipped as Eve traced the crimson trail upward, her eyes locking on the man’s body stretched across the top of the dome, speared by St Peter’s cross.

Ew. But who is he? I wanna know!

I'm another writer that can't write in that "silence" that people seem to keep talking about. I need the music to tune out the other noises: TV, radio, lawnmowers, the 'clackity-clack' of the wife's keyboard on the other side of the room....

I've got playlists put together for the various pieces I'm working on, ranging from soundtrack, to classical, solo piano, acoustic guitar... to some symphonic rock, bit of alternative, a dash of techno... Whatever I can find that either fills the mood for a section, or serves to sum up a character. Other times, I need something to put the mind into that fat, sloppy delta-wave and let the ideas come a-rollin' on through...

Lately, the ritual has been starting the playlist with a character piece, or the story theme, and then letting it shuffle out and see where the tunes take me.

I usually reward myself with a break of some sort: a trip to the kitchen for a snack, or a drink. Sometimes I'll watch an episode of some show I've been meaning to get to, to give myself some space from the project.

Other times, the reward is momentum to charge right into the next portion.

“What do you see?”  Kai asked, his older sister’s breath(e)* huffing in his ear as Eve leaned over him to look out the window.  He elbowed his sister with typical sibling scuffling.

*maybe it's one of those midwest word usage things, but breathe just isn't the right word for me, but Spell/Grammar check says it should be breathe....  help?


OR the forward flash intro from later in the book.  Does it reveal too much?  This is the full forward flash..358 words

“Kai, stay here.”

Kai wore his obstinate face, the one that said, “Don’t mess with me.”  The face that said, “You’re only my sister and you aren’t in charge.”

Never trust your computer's grammar check, even when it's right. It should be "breath" -- the noun,  what goes in and out when you "breathe."

I also liked the second opening: it packs more of a punch, demands a bit more attention than the first, and has a rocked-forward-on-the-balls-of-the-feet feeling, whereas the first comes as a leisurely Sunday stroll.

However, I'm not exactly sure where you're going with the magic angle: is it a widely-known thing? If Eve recently came into her powers, was it a surprise to her, as well?

If so, then emphasizing the "oh-geez-I-have-to-go-back-to-school-now-this-is-normal-life" beginning may be more appropriate for the story.

Meg, have you watched the tutorial videos?

I tried the 30 day trial, and bought it after about two weeks. It just does a lot of things the way I want to do them, and keeps the clutter of most word processors out of the way so I'm not tempted to play with the fonts for 20 minutes.

I like to write in blocks -- an action scene here, a slower dialogue scene there, something way far-out further in the work that I'm going to need to start foreshadowing, or something further back in the manuscript that I want to flesh out.

For some of the stuff I'm working on, I have a lot of pictures and diagrams that I keep referring to: Scrivener lets me drop them all in one place so I don't have to keep hunting for them all over my HD, or keep switching to different applications to check my notes.

And not knowing how long the writing projects I'm working on will be, I like the flexibility that Scrivener offers for keeping the monsters organized-and-self-contained.

I'd be interested to see from people who don't like the program -- what didn't work?

It also encourages you to discover creative ways to kill characters. For example, if you need a character to die of puncture wounds, it's much more interesting to have someone push them from a second-story balcony onto a wrought-iron fence then to find them with a knife sticking out of their back on the floor of the conservatory with Colonel Mustard. 

I was merely interested in this book upon glancing at the title.


Now I must own a copy.

I've been running on Mac for about eight years now, and will only touch a PC at work because I have no choice.

As far as writing goes, MS Word is even better on Mac than it is for PC.

Mac also has the iWork Pages program, which took over for the old Appleworks word processing program. Pages still feels a bit rough, and can't seem to make up its mind whether or not it's a word processor or page layout program. The biggest problem I've found with it is that I keep thinking "how would I do it in MSWord" instead of "what makes sense to do?"

Another program, Scrivener, is only available on Mac, and it's what I use for most of my preliminary writing.

I heartily recommend you either hit up the Apple website and take a look at the Pages demos and walkthroughs, or -- even better -- if you live near an Apple store, head in and get your fingertips on one of the machines.

You may find that the iBook/MacBook might be a bit on the pricey side, but the machines last. I got a Powerbook back in mid 2000 and only replaced it a couple years ago. And at the time, it was the "midline" model. So if you do go with a Mac, it's money very well spent.

I guess there is always instant messenger!  LOL

We did that for two years before we actually met, so thankfully it's been burned out of our systems Nowadays, she just throws crumpled up rough drafts at me when she wants to get my attention....