Author Thoughts from a Figment live chat

I participated in my first "live chat" the other night. It was like sneaking a peek at somebody's Gchat (although apparently 500 other people were doing it, so I guess I'm not that big a creep). The chat, run by This Is Teen and Figment, went down between two of my very favorite authors: Maggie Stiefvater and Lucy Christopher. It was supposed to be about voice, but their answers spanned a whole range of writerly topics that had me taking avid notes. 

On Character:

- You don't always have to know how the story ends, but you should know the end of the characters' emotional arc. In other words, what do they learn? Everything that happens to a character in the story leads to the realization they come to by the end.

- It's OK to steal people. (I liked this one...because I'm constantly stealing sayings and nervous gestures from people from strange and familiar). Keep writing fresh by watching how people react to things; their speech patterns and movements; their turns of phrase.

- Read out loud to see how a character's voice is shaping up; it's great for objectivity and for 'hearing' what isn't working for your characters.

- The most important thing is that your character be consistent and believable and true to themselves...

- I think it comes back to being true to the individual you're writing. You don't ask "would a teen say this?" you ask "would my character say this?"

- Ask yourself: who is it that your character projects? Who are they really on the inside? You need to know the 'why' when you're the author. WHY are your characters acting the way they do? Don't worry about the physical things like eye color and hair length...worry about motivation, what propels them.

- Reading out loud helps you to know if you're being yourself, or if you're being your character.

Quotables:

From Maggie: "...the key to true storytelling is to be specific". You can find a character's 'truth' when their reactions become predictable, and you know what it is that drives them

LC: "I write stories about places I want to explore / think about more / have issues with / have an interesting cultural resonance."

MS: "Absolutely. A setting is like a character where you have to ask yourself, why are things that way HERE. Not anywhere else, but HERE."

MS: "So if there is something peculiar and interesting about you, something cool you've done, that is what you should mine for your novels."

MG: "In my head, the story already exists, and my job is to dust carefully away until I find it beneath all the silt. And if I smash too hard and impose my will and bust past writer's block without thinking about what is really stopping me from writing, I'll smash off the statue's arm. So I need to go carefully and trust my gut, and when they are right, I can FEEL it. I see it right there. The story I always meant to write."

MS: "If you know how a character is going to react, you know what they're going to say."

It was a fantastic chat, and well worth sipping wine through. If you want to replay it in all its glory. go here! 

Lessons Learned from Ok Go

In the whirlwind that has been the last few weeks of agent research/querying/rinse & repeat, I've learned one unavoidable lesson.

Rejection sucks. It doesn't matter what form it comes in and why. It just... sucks.

But it's a part of the creative process. No matter who you are and what you've got on offer, it's going to happen. But it can be motivating. And (here comes the important lesson)... success if all about what you choose to do with it.

And for those days when you're stuck in the "this sucks" place... well, there's always the writing. And then there's this:



Not only does this video make me extremely happy, but it also proves two things. Perfection takes lots, and lots, of practice. Can you imagine how many times they had to shoot this before it went to plan? But they did it anyway. Why? Because it's an awesome idea.

It must have been a lot of work, but they had FUN doing it. And isn't that what creativity's all about?

Book Review: The Space Between

The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff
Genre: YA Speculative Fiction

Since I've been writing query letters and think this book's jacket cover is pretty near pitch-perfect, I'm not going to try and reinvent it:

"Everything burns in Pandemonium... a city in Hell made of chrome and steel, where there is no future and life is an expanse of frozen time. That's where Daphne lives. The daughter of a demon and a fallen angel, she wonders what lies in store for her. Will she become a soulless demon like her sisters? Or follow in the footsteps of her brother Obie, whose life is devoted to saving lost souls on Earth? All she wants is to find a place where she belongs. When Obie saves a bleeding, broken boy named Truman from the brink of death and then suddenly goes missing, Daphne struggles between her demon instincts and her growing--yet achingly unfamiliar--feelings for Truman. As Daphne and Truman search for Obie, they must navigate the jealousies and alliances of the violent archangels who stand in their way. But Daphne also discovers, unexpectedly, what it means to love and be human in a world where human is the hardest thing to be."

I'm not usually one for angel/demon stories particularly, but I fell into this one headlong. One of the things I loved was what one reviewer called Yovanoff's 'moral ambivalence'. She delves into some pretty dark territory, and she doe it deftly and absorbingly without fear of touching on what some would consider taboo areas for YA lit. Truman drinks, smokes, swears and self-destructs in a variety of ways, and yet I still cared about him. I think I cared about him more because he was, to me, a very realistic portrait of a teenage boy in trouble. I loved the dark fantastical elements, too: demon girls with metal teeth and worlds that burn. This story is creepy, no doubt about it. It's creepy and dark done incredibly, enviably well, in ways that made me WANT to stay up until 3AM with ugly things.

I also loved this book for one of the same reasons I loved Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races: because the love story was so engrossing without being the main event. While the tension between Daphne and Truman is palpable, it's never really spoken or overtly underlined. Everything is subtext and longing expertly portrayed. The yearning jumped off the pages, creating a connection that I didn't want to step away from.

In short, I loved it.

Things I'd Like To Give My Students

I just wrapped up my last day of teaching for the time being, which coincided with the seniors' last day of classes. I had many of them in my creative writing class, and I wanted to leave them with something to think about as they start to imagine the shape of the rest of their lives. I was daunted by the task of saying something that wouldn't sound trite or hollow.

So I told them what I wish someone could have told me:

As you get older, you'll find that it's easy to get lost. Lost in love, lost in work, lost in life's dramas and complications. It's easy to lose your sense of who you are and who you want to be. Which is why it's important to make yourself stop: stop and reflect on what matters to you, on the things you never want to let yourself forget. Writing is a beautiful way to do that. So today I want you to write your future self a letter. Tell yourself what matters to you now, and what you want to make sure you never lose sight of. 

It was a really nice class, and a really nice moment. They all put different "open me" dates on their envelopes, and it was interesting to see what dates they picked. The first week of college. The last week of college. Their 25th birthday. I found myself fervently hoping that they hold onto their letters, and that whoever they turn out being is an even better version of themselves than they can currently imagine.

One of my favorite things about teaching has been talking to kids about books. It's given me the chance to reflect on what books helped change my world when I was their age. The books that made me fall in love with reading all over again and that made my last year of high school more memorable. These are the books I'd like to give my students:

 




 

Best Music of 2011

Discovering great new music's a special experience: that moment when a song sinks into your bones, speaking to you and for you, and you realize that something good has just walked into your world. I listen to a lot of music through my iPod when I'm out running or writing. So, for me, truly good music enriches the soundtrack by which I perform my most important, most Kate-like activities. These are the albums that most profoundly enriched my life's soundtrack this year.

This holiday season I'm feeling incredibly thankful for these artists, and for Australia, the country that (in one way or another) brought these tunes into my orbit. Listen and enjoy!

Best Music of 2011

City and Colour - Little Hell

This soulful acoustic genius pairs beautiful lyrics with haunting melodies that will stay with you for days. Man do I love this guy. "The Grand Optimist" blew me totally away.

Cold War Kids - Mine Is Yours

Many a scene of my novel took shape to the tune of this band's sharp, unique sound. "Out of the Wilderness" has won a special place in my heart.

 Gotye - Making Mirrors

This soundtrack has upbeat songs that made me smile - and poignant ones that made me feel understood - at all the right moments.

 Radiohead - King of Limbs

Dear Radiohead,

I don't know that I could write without you. I know that my second book wouldn't be what it is without you. My love for you is endless.

Love Always,
Kate

Lisa Mitchell - Wonder

A truly spectacular lady singer/songwriter with a killer voice and one of the most unique albums I've ever heard. So many of my best and most profound Brisbane memories this year happened with this CD as a backdrop.

 Seeker Lover Keeper

What happens when you take three shockingly amazing solo artists and put them together in a room? This album happens. "Bridges Burned" was my personal anthem this year. Many an afternoon in the car was spent with me belting out those lyrics to the world through my windshield.

The Middle East - I Want That You Are Always Happy

Another group that came with me on many a sunset jog. So beautiful, so quiet, so haunting - "Blood" makes my skin tingle every time.

Book Review: The Scorpio Races

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Young Adult urban fantasy

Those who know me understand how passionately I feel about Maggie Stiefvater's work, so I was excited to crack her newest book open. The story is set on the island of Thisby where every year magical, killer water horses climb out of the sea and roam the beaches in search of human flesh. My friend Tori likes to call them 'horse nymphs', but trust me when I say they're much more awe-inspiring than they sound. It's tradition that the locals try and tame these beasts and ride them in a deathly festival called the Scorpio Races. Puck decides to ride her own, non-magical horse in order to keep a roof over her family's heads. Sean races because it's in his blood: he's described as having 'one foot on land, one foot in the sea'. This story is about what happens when two people with a lot to lose choose to race--and fight for--each other in a world that's as beautiful as it is deadly.

If I could only use one word for this book it would have to be atmospheric. That's the thing I loved most about it: the island of Thisby is a character on its own, one that influences and affects each character profoundly and in different ways. The descriptions of setting are stunning, so visceral that you really do feel like you're there. It makes you want to be there, even if it does have demon horses. Stiefvater uses townsfolk and local lore in a way that makes Thisby jump off the page. I don't know how she does it--only that, as a writer, I wish I did.

The magical element is taut and unique. I was a huge horse girl when I was younger, so I loved reading the race descriptions and all the talk about bits and snaffles.

There are a lot of YA novels that go very, very heavy on the hunky, sexy love angle; I can really only take so many pages of heavy petting. But the love story here is beautifully crafted and totally understated, which made this story special for me. So much of what goes on between them happens in subtext as they quietly edge their way towards a relationship. I love that neither one of them had to give up who they were in order to be together. There was definitely sexy tension, and it was powerful without being anywhere near overpowering. This book is, above all, about connection, not just between two lovers but between family members, human and nature, man and beast.

The writing is, as always, beautiful, and the narrative voice is strong and sure. This is a unique and lovely book; if you're into YA, it isn't to be missed.

**Update 5/4/2014: I have now listened to the audiobook version of this novel an embarrassing number of times and recommend it very highly. If you're into being read to, it's a real gem.**
  

Upcoming Book Release: Forever

I'm so, so, so excited for the upcoming release of Maggie Stiefvater's third and final book in her Wolves of Mercy Falls series. She's a bit of a YA literary hero of mine, and I've loved following her through her publishing process. One of the many reasons she's a favorite of mine is because she's ridiculously artsy. Artsy enough to put together stop-motion trailers for her books. This is the kind of thing I could see myself doing when I'm a published author (and a crazy cat lady).

http://www.fountainbookstore.com/autograph-maggie

Top 5 Albums to Write To: 2010

As we round the bend to the end of this year, I find myself thinking back to 2010's discoveries of the musical kind. I love finding new music, especially when it's music that finds its way into my writing life. Music helps me get into writing zone, to refine my characters, and to understand the essence of what it is I'm trying to write.

This was what I had on repeat while I wrote my way through 2010:

1. Radiohead - In Rainbows

If I had to pick one album that cut into my soul this year and made a home there, this would be that one. Its sharp, moody tones and intense, haunting lyrics made my work-in-progress possible. Every major character of mine has to have a theme song. Two of my current characters' songs come from this album ('All I Need' and 'Weird Fishes/ Arpeggi')

2. White Rabbits - It's Frightening

Sooo good - fast paced, choppy, but with rich sounds, addictive drum beats, and great vocals. If my current work-in-progress had a theme song, it would be ' The Salesman (Tramp Life)'.

3. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

These guys have a fantastic, punky sound, that makes me think of chunky platforms and the London Underground. I sometimes like to give moments in scenes I'm writing theme songs that capture the general mood-of-the-moment: 'Potion Approaching' and 'Dangerous Animals' and 'Crying Lightening' all did the job nicely.

4. Florence + the Machine - Lungs

Finally, a female artist to add to the list - one with a kickass voice and a really unique sound. I love the way she mixes the soft plucking on the harp with the booming of the drums. The more haunting songs are my favorite (trend, anyone?), like 'Blinding' and 'Cosmic Love'.

5. Eclipse Movie Soundtrack

Don't judge a CD by its cover! No matter what you might think of the book series, their soundtracks has been amazing, and I think this one has been the best of all. There are so many rich, beautiful tunes to be found here. Some of the ones I've written to on repeat are 'Heavy in Your Arms', 'My Love' (by an Aussie artist, might I add: go Australia go), and 'Jonathan Low'.

Reverence, Respect & Mauling

In Anne Fadiman's book Ex Libris, a fabulous ode to book nerds the world over, she discusses the different ways in which we treat our books. Fadiman wisely surmises that "... just as there is more than one way to love a person, so there is more than one way to love a book". The way she sees it, there's 'courtly love' and 'carnal love'- and which the book lover practices can say more than one thing about them.

I found myself fascinated by her articulation of a thing I've thought about for years. It's interesting to me how people treat their books and how adamant they are about the right way to love literature. One of the authors at work- definitely a courtly lover- admitted to me that she hates writing in books, so much so that she didn't want to mark in a copy of her own book. I'd say that's an old-fashioned feeling- books are hallowed, keep them clean- but I've known many an older reader who beat their most loved books into submission. My grandfather lived by his books, and he wrote in his (with a pencil). Granted, he only put tiny tick marks next to paragraphs, a pretty minimalist legacy to leave behind. Reading past his tick marks is like becoming a detective: why did he mark that part? What was it that made him slow down and make note?

It seems to me like every reader has their own cringe-worthy feelings about a certain book marking vice. There are those who think writing in a book is a huge bookkeeping sin.

Then there are those people who want to cry when they see a book laid open and face down instead of using a book mark. I've never much cared about leaving books laid open, but a broken spine is a tough pill for me to swallow.

Then there are those people (I'll say right now that I DO NOT get you) that won't buy second-hand books because they are 'dirty'. You know what else is dirty? Money. Treadmills. Door knobs. Your car seat probably has a higher probability of giving you somebody's cooties. And isn't there something great about a book with a history? One that you know has been in someone else's hands, has passed through somebody else's life? Plus they are savers of trees. So get over yourself.

I'm a carnal lover of books (shocking, I know). I tend to devour them, underline them, sometimes (often) stain them. That, plus my frighteningly acute power of losing book marks (even while lying supine and still), means that dog-earring is sometimes a necessity. But ever since I watched Finding Forester, I've had conflicted feelings about dog-earring a page. I can understand why someone would find dog earring offensive... but isn't it better to see that a book has been consumed?

All of this nerdy musing leaves me wondering: can you tell the level of love a book has experienced by its condition? By looking at how someone treats their books, can you learn anything interesting about them that you wouldn't have known otherwise?

I went to my own bookshelf to investigate.

Most of my books are still State side, so I've got a limited sample size. That said, here are some of my findings from books I picked (somewhat) at random:

St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves (loved it): browned, water wrinkled, and written in. Still has the price tag on from Politics & Prose (bought 12/7 of an unknown year), which makes my heart squeeze.

Confederates in the Attic (loved it): Holding up well, but a little dirty around the edges. It still smells like the bookstore at the Antietam battlefield. Makes me think of fall and of my Dad.

Down Under (loved it): Wow. I just found my ticket stub from my flight from Paris to Dubai in this book- one of the flights on my first long journey to Australia. I can tell I had this book while in 'Europe' mode- it is yellow, beaten, tired-looking and proud of it.

Watership Down (loved it): scratched and a bit weather beaten, but still in pretty good shape. I found a bus slip in it from grad school days. Spine still very much unbroken.

Mudbound (loved it): spine broken (damn), and bottom corner stained, probably because I loved it so much I loaned it to three people and keep on my desk (where I often eat [spill] breakfast and writing snacks).

Conclusions?

1. I have not made a habit of keeping books I've only sorta liked since coming to Australia.

2. I can tell which books are from which eras of my life. Dog eared and written in profusely= high school falling-in-love-with-literature era. Sun damaged from sitting on a windowsill/dented from holding up a bed= frantic, boisterous college era. Filled with memorabilia but otherwise treated with some semblance of respect= big girl era. All have been ravaged. Just in different ways.

3. My books are a time machine through which I can revisit the time when I bought them and read them. That's pretty nice.

4. The only books of mine that look pristine are the ones I haven't read yet.

Inconclusive findings, but interesting (to me, anyway). So what's your book handling philosophy?

Reads That Feed

I recently read this post from the venerable Maggie Stiefvater about books that feed her creativity while working on a project. There are those writers who don't like to read while they're writing because they don't want to 'corrupt' their own authorial voice (there are those would-be writers who hardly read at all... say what?). That's something I can understand, to a point, but not something I resonate with. If anything, I read more when writing something new.

This is, undoubtedly, a procrastination tool ("It's OK that I'm not writing. I'm reading"), but it is also something else, something important. When I'm writing, I feel compelled to turn back to the writers that rocked my world with their words and their stories. I can turn to these beloved reads and know that I can crack them open to any page and come across passages like this:

He flapped again at the flies and looked out the window at the first smear of foggy dawn and waited for the world to begin shaping up outside. The window was tall as a door, and he had imagined many times that it would open onto some other place and let him walk through and be there. - Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

And this:

"Hello boys."

"Hello, Mrs. Lisbon" (in unison).

She had the rectitude, Joe Hill Conley later said, of someone who had just come from weeping in the next room. He had sensed (this said many years later, of course, when Joe Hill Conley claimed to tap at will the energy of his chakras) an ancient pain arising from Mrs. Lisbon, the sum of her people's griefs.

- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

And then this:

I loved hearing Anatole speak English. His pronunciation sounded British and elegant, with "first" coming out as "fest," and "brought" more like "brrote." But it sounded Congolese in the way it rolled out with equal weight on every syllable- a pig in a sack- as if no single word wanted to take over the whole sentence.

- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

These books are what I want my writing to be: they are powerful without being overpowering, elegant without being flowery- every word and detail adds something powerful to the story and the flow. They inspire me, chiefly, because they are beautiful examples of voice. These are voices I can pick out of a crowd, so strong and assured that they literally sweep you off your feet and into the world they are creating. These voices have a unique and undeniable pull.

There are moments when I find this exercise deflating, especially on a bad writing day ("My writing will NEVER be this good. In fact, in comparison, it is two inches shy of abysmal"). These moments are almost always overridden by feelings of awe and inspiration. Every time I open these books, I learn something new that I can bring to my craft. I am challenged to rise above my best and reach for something even better. These authors feed my creativity in ways that make me want to be better.

Other books I like to return to are The Time Traveler's Wife, Bel Canto, and (for travel writing) Confederates in the Attic. Are there reads that feed your creativity? What is it about them that brings you coming back?

Good Read to the Rescue!

I was sitting on the train the other day listening to Bill Byson's A Walk In The Woods. As I listened (and laughed, inevitably), I looked out the window at the once-foreign city I currently call home and was reminded of another trip I'd made.

If you've ever travelled alone, then you may have experienced that moment: the moment when you realize that you are disconnected from everything you know and love. No one knows you where you are (I didn't have a phone, so this felt especially true at the time). You could fall into a ditch and expire loudly and dramatically, and no one would know to start looking for you. That moment when you realize that you are completely out of your element. The knowledge slams into you so hard that you are rendered terrified, temporarily helpless.

So it was for me in Vienna. It was the third stop on my first trip abroad, but it was the first time I truly felt panicked by what I was doing. I was in a country where I didn't know the language, where the transit system was so overwhelming that I couldn't even think about trying to use it. I didn't meet anyone at the hostel where I was staying (unless you count the five permanently half-naked Germans with whom I shared a bunk room). In the two stops before, I had made friends or met up with one, so I was never really alone. For the first time, I was forced to fend completely for myself. I felt like the world was going to swallow me up. I spent two days wandering around on foot, not really enjoying myself, fending off tears and my frustration at being such a baby.

These are the moments when you grasp for the familiar. So when I saw an English language bookshop, I stopped and picked up Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There. I marched over to a Starbucks I'd passed earlier, got myself a pumpkin spice latte, and read away the afternoon. That sounds like a horrifically touristy thing to do, and I suppose it was (later, when I was up to it, I did go to some of Vienna's famed coffee houses. They were amazing). I dove into my first Bill Bryson experience with the concentration of a drowning person clinging to a raft. I was hoping that Bill's travels through Europe would help to ease my mind. It did that, and a whole lot more.

Bill Bryson made me laugh out loud, something I hadn't done in days (I'd barely spoken, let alone laughed). His cultural blunders made me realize that my foreigners' awkwardness was normal, even expected. It was OK that I hadn't had a real conversation in over 24 hours! It was normal to eat alone while eavesdropping on strangers! He let me know that these things were just a part of the process. His insights lightened my heart, made me realize that traveling alone wasn't always supposed to be pretty, and that it was as much about discovering your own limitations and strengths as the place in which you're traveling.

That afternoon, Bill Bryson saved me. He allowed me to take a deep breath and think, "OK, then. I'm not really alone." After that, I had a great 'ole time. I threw away my map and let myself get lost. Getting lost in Vienna was how I fell in love with Vienna, and how I captured these:

It wasn't until now, years later, that I realized how much that book saved me. I'll always be grateful to Mr. Bryson, even though he'll never know it. That's the kind of book I'd love to write: the kind in which people see themselves and feel just a little bit less alone.

Has a book ever come to your rescue in a time of need?

To Be or Not To Be (a Pirate)?

I've always been kind of obsessed with pirates, before Pirates of the Caribbean made them cool once more. The old school kind who (theoretically) wore bright tights and who (actually) chopped people's fingers off and fed them to the sharks. I've done a lot of pirate recreating in my time, making comments about said tights that will see me mocked until the end of time. Old-school pirates are a fun idea- as long as you don't think about their methods too hard...

... which brings me to the real subject of this post. PiratING. That hot-button, unlawful act that nobody condones, but that almost everybody does at some point. Well, not everybody, but definitely my Manfriend (shh, don't tell the Pirate Police). My male companion has taken pirating to near-professional levels, a state of affairs that has led to several heated discussions about property rights and artistic integrity.

The last of these discussions revolved around Trueblood. I have a deep, abiding love for this series. I dutifully paid full price for the first season and was patiently waiting for the second to come out in Australia. Of course, it wasn't going to come out here until it was done airing in the U.S. (and honestly, of COURSE people are going to pirate when they make us wait... but that's a rant for another post). So I was surprised- even tantalized- when Manfriend told me that we could HAVE the second season at the same time America did. All it would take was the click of his mouse, and there they would be, all in a sexy little row. So of course, I let him do it, vowing to him that I would buy the second season when it came out on DVD.

"Why?" he asked, looking puzzled and slightly exasperated. "We'll already have all the episodes in HD. Why waste money on a series you already have?"

"Because," I said, arms akimbo (GOD I love that word), "Time and money and artistic effort and love went into the making of this program, and because I love the end product so, I want to support it by paying for it."

"You know," he said, in his I'm-humoring-your-absurdity-because-I-love-you tone, "it doesn't cost them nearly as much to produce those DVD's as they charge. It's a rip-off. Besides, they make enough money without your patronage."

"Oh yeah? How do you know?"

He knew because, halfway through this conversation, he'd Googled it and found out exactly how many millions those DVDs had garnered. It was a lot of millions.

This information did soften my resolve. Even so, the whole thing made me feel... icky. This was an artistic product I loved, one that I got ample amounts of enjoyment from. Wasn't it wrong not to pay for it? I imagined selling my first novel ('fantasized' is probably a more accurate descriptor) only to have my profits dwindle because people didn't feel like paying for it. It's hard to compare: I mean, you can't burn a copy of a book (I mean, physically you can, but not over a computer... unless it's an electronic copy. Wait... this is getting confusing). I put tears and sweat and lots of time not eating/exercising/having a social life into that beloved book. Those stolen sales would severely diminish my capacity to write for anything like a living. It isn't fair not to pay for something that someone has worked hard to produce.

I get what Manfriend is saying- CD/DVD prices in Australia are out of this WORLD expensive. Trueblood doesn't need our money: they have enough to keep making the show and to pay all involved a very healthy wage. Still, does it matter how much money they have, or how much you save? It is a piece of art, and art should always be valued.

So, I've put my foot down when it comes to small and emerging artists, people who I want to support so that they can do more, like Alan Boyle and Sarah Blasko. I also draw the line when it comes to artists I'm truly obsessed with, such as Ray Lamontagne and Ani DiFranco. I try to stay strong on TV shows, too, but... I'll admit that there are several easy-to-locate cracks in that resolve. When it comes to big-time movies and albums, sometimes I just can't see the point... I know, I know, try not to judge me. Resolving this issue is a little bit harrrrd (You must have seen that one coming).

My Manfriend has done lots of 'research' on pirating, and generally, he feels no guilt whatsoever about ripping all and sundry. The jury is still out for me, as it makes me feel all slimy inside. So... to be or not to be: what are your thoughts on this question?