Richard MacManus

Morality in art has always been a fascination of mine. And by art I mean literature, music, movies – the works. Some weblogs even. A favourite artist of mine is the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. One of Gould’s theories was that music should be judged on moral considerations rather than aesthetic ones. In an … Read more

I had written a long post describing my motivations for writing my novel, but on reflection I won’t publish it because it belongs more to my personal journal than on a public website. That is to say, it’s probably only relevant to me. But to sum up in a sentence: my main reasons for writing a … Read more

In November 2003 I embarked on a new adventure: writing a novel. I took part in Nanowrimo, an annual novel-writing challenge that takes place every November. Nanowrimo stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ and the task is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I first discovered Nanowrimo just 3 days before the 2003 … Read more

What’s your primary content? I felt a bit guilty about dissing Jason Kottke’s new design yesterday. I didn’t mean to be negative, actually I admire that he’s put all his content in one feed. It has its merits – for example readers only need to subscribe to the one RSS feed. The drawback though is … Read more

I’m thinking about re-designing my weblog. While I was busy writing my novel in November, others were exploring the boundaries of the weblog form. Dave Winerre-designed his hugely influential blog, Mark Pilgrim did a re-design (and curiously, Dave and Mark’s blogs have ended up looking pretty similar – or maybe it’s just me!). Dave is … Read more

The world premiere of the Lord of the Rings was held in Wellington, New Zealand today – my hometown. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director of the Rings trilogy, is from Wellington. He’s the King of Wellington as far as I’m concerned. And NZ’s capital city turned on a beautiful sunny day today for the … Read more

I’ve released the 0.9 version of my Nanowrimo novel, which I wrote in 27 days during November 2003. Apparently there were 3680 people all over the world crazy enough to successfully complete the Nanowrimo contest in 2003. So here’s my effort: Dirtside to Spaceside (PDF – 344KB) Shortly I will begin to write some thoughts … Read more

I’ve published my Nanowrimo novel on Read/Write Web as an HTML file. The PDF version will have to wait till Monday. I tried to use the Adobe Online Conversion service, but I couldn’t get the file size under 600KB for some reason (which is odd because the Word file is only 350KB). So I’ll use … Read more

50,060 words. Completed in 27 days. The new name of my novel is: Dirt-side to Space-side. This is a NASA term for the Interplanetary Internet. I’ll post a PDF version of my novel in the next day or two (once I correct the spelling mistakes). Looks like I’m the second Nanowrimo winner from Wellington, New … Read more

The penultimate day. 48,011 words (ch. 54 onwards). One more night’s writing to go. I think I’m bringing together all the threads in time. I can’t wait to finish now, although I’ll probably miss it once I am finished. But I won’t miss the late nights and early mornings. It’s 1am as I write this. … Read more

November 25, 2003 46,253 words. Here’s the latest (chapter 49 onwards). Two more nights to go and I’ll be finished. Yesterday was quite difficult and I wasn’t satisfied with my writing. I couldn’t get in The Zone. No flow mojo. Thankfully today was easier and I was back in rhythm. I even went back and … Read more

42,448 words – nearly 85% done. The end of chapter 46 is here, then I started a new page for chapter 47 onwards. While walking in the local park today, feeding the ducks on a lovely sunny breezy Sunday with my wife and two-year old daughter, I had some ideas for the ending of my … Read more

Saturday morning as I write this. I will have more words to contribute later this weekend, but for now I’m at 39,564 words. Here’s the latest (ch. 44 onwards). Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

36,119 words. Here’s the latest (ch.42 onwards). I’d be interested to know if anyone is reading this and if so, what are your thoughts. I don’t have much time to respond to your comments, but I do appreciate them. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

34,094 words. The latest is here. Yesterday and today was spent writing a long chapter 41, where the main character Declan is inserted into a virtual world as an avatar. I surprised myself with some William Burroughs-like imagery to descibe the virtual world. It’s likely to need some tidying up when I finally get a … Read more