Richard MacManus

18,297 words, here’s the latest. I’ve also added it to the menu. Still on track, but I didn’t get much done in the weekend. I was zonked out with the flu on Friday and Sat, watched the rugby on Saterday night (ABs through to semi against aussie), then went to The Matrix Revolutions on Sunday … Read more

It’s Day 8 and my word count is 14,778. Here’s the latest. I took yesterday off. Have got a bit of flu, but the show must go on. I’m trying not to take my novel too seriously, having a bit of fun with it. Today I came up with the concept of “space blogs”. Heh. … Read more

12,288 words. Here it is. btw I accidentally discovered an error in the very first sentence today. How embarrassing. So I fixed it up…I thought about leaving it in there, as proof that I haven’t done any revisions yet. But then there are probably plenty of other bits of evidence of that! I may take … Read more

I’ve decided to go the whole hog and post my novel online. There are a variety of reasons for this. One is that posting excerpts would mean it would be read out of context. If I’m prepared to post excerpts, I may as well just tell the whole story. Oh and another reason is that … Read more

8,120 words. I’m wondering whether to post excerpts online. Hmmm. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

6,086 words. Had to struggle to reach this. Started at 8.30pm and finished about 11.10pm. Man this is hard work and I’m only 3 days in. 27 more days to go! The good news is I’m still working at 2,000 words per day, but I suspect I’m going to have to put in a couple … Read more

4,062 words, so I’m keeping pace with the 2000 words per day goal I’ve set myself. I notice I’m currently first amongst the 15 or so Wellington writers 🙂 Enough writing for today. I’m off to watch the All Blacks hammer Wales in the rugby World Cup. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

It’s just after 7pm on Saturday 1 November and I’ve finished my first day’s writing in the NaNoWriMo challenge. I managed 2,108 words today, which I’m really pleased with. It took me about 3 hours, a little over 1 hour in the morning straight writing (about 1,000 words) and in the evening I spent 1-2 … Read more

I’ve now officially entered NaNoWriMo, which is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over 30 days. It kicks off on 1 November, which is one day away for me. I checked into the official NaNoWriMo website tonight and I was surprised to see that 14 other people from Wellington in New Zealand … Read more

I’m one of those people that regularly says: “One day, I’m going to write a novel.” Well now may be my chance. NaNoWriMo is a an annual challenge to write a novel in 30 days, over the month of November. The novel must be at least 50,000 words, which is about 175 pages. I discovered … Read more

I posted this on my linkblog, but I feel like publishing it here too. I heard some of Rautavaara’s Symphony Number 7 (Angel of Light) a few weeks ago, for the first time, and I was quite taken by the music. It reminded me of The Matrix. So anyway tonight I googled Rautavaara and discovered … Read more

I judge the quality of a weblog by its IDEAS, but it seems some people equate quality with popularity. Is the ‘culture of celebrity’ that afflicts Western movies, television and radio creeping in to weblogs as well? These thoughts were prompted by the recent weblog discussion on power laws and how they relate to weblogs. … Read more

The Two-Way Web is a very simple concept. It’s all about normal everyday people having a publishing platform on the Web. Sounds reasonable to me, but a thread on Many-to-Many this week has complicated the issue. Here’s my summary, based on how I first discovered and then tracked the thread (the process somehow seems important … Read more

David Weinberger recently wrote a weblog post entitled When blogs get really popular. In it he states that the line between blogging and email will become blurred. He says: “The word “blog” will expand to cover any linkable posting (a place) where a person gets to speak her mind more than once. If it’s more … Read more

Thanks to Peter Lindberg, for pointing me and others to a couple of Marshall McLuhan articles. But before I talk about those, here’s an overview of Marshall McLuhan from the Wikipedia: “Famous for coining the phrases “The medium is the message” and “the global village,” McLuhan was one of the early purveyors of the sound … Read more