ANDREW SCOTT @andrewscottonline - Tumblr Blog

End of an era

I finally canceled my control of the “andrewscottonline.com” domain, which should end completely in a few weeks. It was a good run—more than a decade. Using Tumblr to create and manage my website was a solid idea in 2010-2011, but now, perhaps there are better alternatives.

Adaptation is a bit like translation. We can nit-pick certain words in a translation, but are the essential narrative elements conveyed, including tone? Chekhov's 'The Lady with a Dog' has also been translated as 'The Lady with the Little Dog,' 'The Lady with the Pet Dog,' and so on. But it's always a dog, not a pig, and never a flying pig with a sub-machine gun.

Advice I gave my screenwriting students, who were then adapting short stories in the public domain. They also had a habit of introducing gun play into stories that didn’t need it.

Images © DC Comics, Inc., except as noted. I’ve written about balloon placement in my book, The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics and also on my website. When I started in comi…

Another excellent post by Todd Klein, one of the best letterers in comics history.

Jim Lee, X-Men #4

Contrary to popular opinion, Jim Lee is at his best—I feel, anyway—when he draws more than six panels per page. Look at this example. 10 panels. Pacing. Humor. Just enough backgrounds. And the “amazing visuals” he’s known for are no less impressive. Not everything has to be a splash page or double-page spread. Yes, he repeated three panels in this sequence—but it’s a smart storytelling decision, not a cheap or lazy one.

Frank Miller, Sin City: That Yellow Bastard

I always love when the lettering goes funky to better match the mood or atmosphere of a story, such as in these skewed captions.

Custom binding comics is my newest interest. Here are my first binds.

Two recent blog posts...

Over at the Engine Books blog, I am beginning to write an occasional column about publishing and the business of writing.

You can read my first two posts:

Who Teaches the Business of Writing?

Writers who teach are generally unprepared to teach the business of creative writing...

AND

I’m the One Who Wants to Be with You

Write your best. Approach publishers with professionalism. If you want to work with a publisher, make sure you like (at least some of) their books. How would you act if you were having a meal with that editor? I think you’d be polite. But something about sending out work or approaching publishers/presses at a book fair makes some writers lose their common decency.

Last summer, Rachel Riederer interviewed me for “The Teaching Class,” an essay she published in Guernica, about adjuncts and non-tenure track faculty. She could only use so much of what I said, of course, but now that her piece has been referenced in this New Yorker article, too—with my story anonymously summarized there—I felt I should include her original questions and my full answers on this blog for anyone who might be interested.

In terms of background, I’d like to know when you started teaching, what subject, what university? And then how long had you been teaching when you had the dust-up?

I started teaching as a graduate assistant at New Mexico State University in 1999. English departments call graduate students who teach “graduate assistants” or “teaching assistants,” but in truth, they’re not assistants at all. They’re almost always solely responsible for choosing class materials, planning lectures and in-class lessons, grading, and so on, and that was my experience, too. I received four days of training before I was turned loose in the classroom for the first time. On the fifth day, the department chair said, “Any questions?”

 I was 22 years old. Some of my students in that first semester were older than me. And once I got over the shock that someone was dumb enough to let a 22-year-old teach a college class, I realized I was quite adept at it. You have to know the subject. You have to know how to relate to other people who may not care about the subject. And you need common sense. If you have those three, you can begin to learn how to teach, but after a certain point, it never gets easier. You’re never on cruise control.

After I finished my M.F.A. at NMSU in 2002, I was hired by Ball State University in my home state of Indiana—a full-time, salaried contract position with benefits that I have to this day. Between 2002 and now, I’ve also taught at a few universities as an adjunct. Most notably for your purposes, I taught three classes per semester at Marian University in Indianapolis (2008-2011).

When the situation I originally told you about occurred in February of 2011, I was finishing my third year as an adjunct at Marian, but it was my twelfth year as a writing instructor at the college level. At Marian, I taught the required first-year writing courses, one of which was also a literature class. At Ball State and other universities, I’ve taught fiction writing, screenwriting, and other creative writing courses, too, though first-year composition is the reason I have had these jobs.

What were your working conditions at the time? (How many courses; amount you were paid, if you feel comfortable saying; what kinds of administrative support / office space / etc, did you have access to, or not have access to?)

I taught three courses per semester as an adjunct at Marian. Had I been assigned more classes per semester, I would have been considered a full-time employee and given an actual salary. Instead, I was paid $700/credit hour, or $2,100 per three-credit course. By contrast, my full-time course load at Ball State meant four classes per semester, and even my starting salary in 2002 meant that I was paid more than $3,500 per course. Now, after twelve years, I make a bit more than $5,000 per course, though my base salary after more than a decade of meritorious service is only finally equal to what many of Ball State’s named peer institutions pay as a starting salary for someone in my position.

There were a handful of us adjuncts who taught English or communication classes at Marian. We were housed in one office with dilapidated, leftover office furniture acquired when other faculty or professionals on campus no longer had use for them. There was one computer for us to share, a hand-me-down that barely held together. One secretary managed everything for the entire department, and the mailroom for the entire university was housed in another building. We were responsible for making our own photocopies, but were given access to a room full of photocopiers. Faculty aren’t allowed to make their own copies in my department at Ball State.

I vaguely knew that the adjunct situation in America was horrible, but only when I began to teach as an adjunct did I begin to fully understand what a horrible racket it is.

I decided that, in addition to my full-time job, I needed to pick up some extra classes somewhere to stay ahead of the economic downturn. And it’s true that, from 2008-2011, while many Americans were losing their jobs or being forced to take furloughs or lose pay in other ways, my annual income continued to increase. But I was teaching seven or eight classes each semester, plus working with online students at Ball State to bring in extra income, too. I had the equivalent of two full-time jobs, in other words, though my overall income was not twice my full-time job’s base salary. My wife and I also needed money to renovate our kitchen; once the kitchen was finished, we could refinance the mortgage we’d agreed to at the height of the housing bubble.

How did you decide that talking about your position as an adjunct was important for your students to know about?

I only talk about the working conditions of contingent faculty when it’s appropriate, such as when a student argues that faculty salaries should be reduced in order to lower tuition costs, or when a student says “I pay your salary,” which is thankfully not something I hear much anymore. Most Americans think university faculty are raking in six-figure salaries for teaching a couple of classes each semester. I find it necessary to fight against those assumptions, which are not representative of the humanities, and certainly not English departments.

How did you tell them? Would love you to walk me through this conversation — how did you phrase things, how did they respond?

In between two of my classes—it’s important to emphasize that this exchange did not happen during scheduled class time—six or seven of my students who had arrived early were hanging out in the classroom. One of them began talking about a history instructor across the hall. The student said the class was easy, that students didn’t have to do much work, and that the teacher seemed interested in getting them to like her. I knew the instructor was an adjunct, and that she taught at several places to cobble together a living. I told the students as much, and that the class was easy because she was afraid of losing her job.

On your students’ understanding of what you were telling them — did they know the term “adjunct” before this conversation? Did they know whether their other teachers were also adjuncts?

A few of them were familiar with the term, but I defined it for them all. I said that an adjunct’s course evaluations could play a huge role in whether he or she was re-hired, and student learning did not seem to matter as much. One of the students asked if I was an adjunct. I told her I was, but only at Marian—in this Age of Google, it was no secret that I also taught at Ball State. One of them jokingly asked why I didn’t go easier on them, too. We laughed, but I told them that because this was my second job, and one I didn’t intend to keep forever, I could afford to have academic standards. “You may not like me, you may not like this class, but if you do the work I assign and make a sincere effort, you will learn something of value,” I said.

Because I considered this interaction a “teachable moment,” I made a comparison that is 100% true, though it still got me in trouble. I said that the university pays the janitor who scrapes the gum off their desks more per year than me and most of the people who teach their first-year classes. My private university students couldn’t believe that, but it was true. Even a low estimate shows how that’s true. Ten bucks per hour for forty hours a week equals an annual salary of $20,800.

One year at Marian, I taught seven courses (including a summer section), but made only $14,700 before taxes. It was three-fourths of the work of my full-time job at Ball State. I would have made nearly double that amount for teaching seven classes at Ball State, based on my then-current salary. And Marian isn’t the worst of the bunch—a few schools in the area still pay adjuncts less than that per credit hour. It’s shameful.

What happened next? Would love to hear more about the student who brought this to the administration.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time—in no way did I think I’d done something wrong by speaking the truth. But 10 days later, my boss wanted to meet with me about a “classroom incident” that had been reported by another faculty member. This other faculty member reported that a student had come to him for help because I had “ranted” about the low pay and working conditions of adjuncts to my students.

I’m not an idiot, but I didn’t immediately recognize that one of my older students shared a last name with a Marian professor who worked in another department, and she was one of the students who participated in this discussion before class. I only knew his name because he sent dozens of emails each semester to the faculty list. The student who supposedly came to him for help was his wife—she told him what I said and it upset him so much that he felt he needed to report me. Again, I didn’t take up class time. This discussion happened before class. And all I did was tell the truth. The kicker? This guy who tried to get me in trouble probably still has an appallingly low salary, too, even for a tenured theater professor.

Teaching in the humanities is like being in The Hunger Games. The odds are never in your favor, and your best bet is to run like hell in the other direction. But if you do get caught up in the fight, you’ll be fighting for scraps. There are no winners.

My boss was especially worked up about the janitor comparison. She wanted to know how I could possibly make that claim.

A day or two before my boss called me into her office, my wife had worked up some budget numbers for the next year. She told me I didn’t need to keep working at Marian—we’d already renovated the kitchen and refinanced, and most of my income from the third year in this position was in the bank. So while I calmly explained to my boss the realities of adjuncts at Marian and across the country, and then argued that she should work harder to improve the working conditions of the instructors under her direction, I already knew how the meeting would end.

I told her that would be my last semester at Marian. She immediately switched to a pleading, softer tone, begging me to stay. I’ll never understand that. She had hit me up for all kinds of free consultations about curricular design—the Writing Program at Ball State had won a big award for our curricular overhaul, and I had played a part in making that happen. The program at Marian was very much out of date, by 20 years or more. Maybe that had something to do with her pleading. Or maybe the only thing worse than a troublemaking adjunct is having to go through the process of hiring his replacement.

Do you think the rise of contingent labor affects student outcomes?

Maybe. I think it’s an easy assumption to make. “Contingent labor” is a broad term. Salaried, full-time employees with benefits—especially those whose one-year contracts have been renewed multiple times—probably feel like they can do more to challenge students and keep high standards. Adjuncts living from class to class might not always feel like they can do that. But are tenure-track faculty better teachers? No. Absolutely not. Obviously, there are good, bad, and mediocre teachers in every department, whether they’re adjuncts, contract faculty, or tenure-track faculty. But some of the best teachers I’ve known have been salaried, full-time instructors off the tenure track.

Now, because of my administrative position, I have a (reduced) teaching load of three courses per semester, the same as most tenure-track faculty in my department. I still write and publish. I still write letters of recommendation for students and colleagues, serve on committees, and everything else. But my base salary twelve years after I started my full-time job is two-thirds of the starting salary my department just offered a tenure-track hire who has almost no relevant teaching experience and no book publications. Departments and universities are afraid to promote contract faculty because they think it will open the door for them to pay everyone a decent salary, adjuncts included. But the research shows that tenure-track salaries are tied to contingent salaries in interesting ways. A rising tide lifts all boats, but too many tenure-track faculty think it’s an us vs. them situation. Universities are being gutted from the inside out by state legislators and those who think “running it like a business” is the best strategy. A recent article in the Indianapolis Business Journal praised my university for its low faculty pay, and didn’t say much about how our recently departed president was paid nearly a million dollars last year. Her base salary was lower than that, of course, but after bonuses and the rest, it totaled close to a million dollars. And this is at a public university in Indiana, one without a medical school or law school.

In my experience, adjuncts are really reluctant to talk with students about their work/contract circumstances. Why do you think this is? Did you feel this way in the past and change your mind, or…?

Adjuncts are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, and universities play on that fear. Tenure-track faculty have their own fears, of course, and in general, I think faculty across the humanities are afraid to demand better pay and working conditions. I have never been afraid to speak up, but look what happened when I did—I was reprimanded for telling the truth, and not even in an especially inflammatory manner. I had the luxury of leaving that position, so it didn’t matter. But what if I’d needed every last one of those 700 dollars per credit hour? What if, as one of my colleagues there did, I had to teach at five different universities all over the state just to get by? I imagine I’d have to act like that colleague, who was defeated and quiet, and who most closely resembled a ghost floating in and out of campus.

I spent last year researching faculty pay for a proposal that asks the university to increase the salaries of contract faculty in my department. I knew the starting salary for my position hadn’t been raised since I started, and that cost-of-living raises during the last 5-10 years had been few and far between, even for faculty who were deemed “meritorious,” as I was. I errantly thought that was just the situation at all universities. But it’s not, I discovered. My university has a list of 21 peer institutions, and 14 of those institutions responded to my inquiries about starting salaries, titles, and course loads for non-tenure-track faculty who teach writing courses. I was ashamed, and then angered, to learn that the median starting salary at these institutions was exactly equal to my current salary. Because I’d been deemed meritorious for more than 10 consecutive years, I should have received the highest annual raise of any contract faculty member in my department during each of those years. Indeed, the only contract faculty who make more than me now are those who’ve taught in the department for 20 years or more. That’s the only way to get a higher salary: grind it out for two or three decades.

Meanwhile, the contingent labor force is becoming more qualified than ever. In some departments, the contingent faculty may be as qualified—or more qualified—than those on the tenure track. As this continues, departments will have to find more equitable ways of compensating their employees. The old way of thinking about contingent labor is that they’re temporary teachers who, if they’re any good, will move on in a year or two to a better position. But that hasn’t been the case for the entirety of my professional career. There just aren’t enough tenure-track positions. Creative writers, in particular, are not going to stop writing poems, essays, short stories, novels, and screenplays just because they have a teaching job off the tenure track, even one with a heavy teaching load, and when those creative works are published, some of them to wide acclaim, the balance of respect and recognition may begin to shift within English departments.

Another factor is location. I’m qualified for many tenure-track positions in creative writing, but my wife and I bought and renovated an old house in Indianapolis that we love. We want to stay here. We are deepening our roots in our home state by choice, not because we don’t have better options. Some people say, well, why don’t you leave academia? Believe me, I think about it every year. I love teaching, but it’s hard to respect yourself when the institution you work for so clearly doesn’t respect you. Because so many Americans assume college professors have the easy life, it can also be difficult for professors to transition to positions outside academia, but it’s not impossible. Your CV might be fat-packed with accomplishments, but if you’re in a non-tenure-track position, there’s a low ceiling and few opportunities for advancement. Try to shuffle sideways into another career and you might find that those interviewing you don’t understand why you’d ever want to leave your “cushy” academic gig. The choice to attend graduate school, especially if your intention is to one day teach college courses, has never been riskier, especially if you take out student loans to do so.

#teaching #adjunct #university #writing #mfa #students

On the Term "Graphic Novel"

Here's an interesting—albeit imperfect—piece by Brenna Clarke Gray about a term that has essentially run its course: graphic novel. Coined by Will Eisner during his early efforts to legitimize the medium in which he supremely excelled, graphic novel is problematic for a number of reasons. Like Gray, I die a little inside when someone refers to a work of nonfiction as a novel, graphic or otherwise. I especially bristle when a personal narrative or work of literary journalism is called a "nonfiction novel," and yes, that means I hate that Truman Capote used the term for In Cold Blood.

In principle, I agree with Gray's thesis; I also prefer the term comics. I have for twenty years, since picking up a signed copy of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics on the day of its release. Her call to action is one I can support. Graphic novels should not be the all-purpose term we use to discuss a rich and diverse medium.

Personally, I've never heard anyone refer to the collected editions of single-issue comics as "trade papers," though. Trade paperbacks, yes. Even trades, as in, "I'm waiting for the trade," which is the practice of not buying a comic until its first four, five, or six issues are collected into one edition.

She argues that such language devalues "the episodic nature of [comics]," which is an important distinction. "When you call something like The Walking Dead a graphic novel," she continues, "you’re eliding the episodic nature—and by extension, the changes in artists, writers, and other personnel that come with it."

Very true. But I wish she had chosen a better example. Artist Tony Moore left after six issues, and Rus Wooton began lettering the book about five issues later. But since then—for well over 100 issues, which is forever in the life of a comic book series—there have not been many changes regarding "the artists, writers, and other personnel" working on The Walking Dead.

Gray's point that "we privilege the literary, and we like [comics] that are more like the literary forms" we already know is incredibly smart. I could read another essay solely about this point, to be honest, as it explains the rather swift canonization—in the academy, if not in the world of comics readers and creators—of books like Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home. The latter two, in particular, seem to have benefitted from the memoir boom of the early- to mid-2000s.

But the guy in the comments who says that graphic novel is the "snotty equivalent of 'literary fiction' in the prose world" is just dumb. Literary fiction is a genre, not a gussied-up attempt to make "regular" fiction seem fancy.

I love reading comics scholarship and anything remotely like it—the history of the medium or certain companies, biographies of creators, and the like. In some parallel universe, there's a version of me who never became a writer because of comics, but who instead found a way to study them in an academic context.

Adam Wainwright and Matt Holliday prepare for the upcoming academic job season. Or the World Series. One or the other.

Readers kept saying, 'Is Rainey going to get her own book?' But I was busy trying to write a novel set in 1902. I spent four years in 1902 before Rainey burst through, stopped that project, and got her own book. There’s a moral to this. Write what’s in your heart, not what’s in your head. Write from the basement, not from the living room. Write from the places that make you afraid.

Dylan Landis, interviewed by Jessica Anya Blau for The Rumpus

With me, everything begins with writing. No pictures at all—you just shut the Polaroid off; you don’t want to be seduced by pictures because then you begin to write for pictures. Images come in language, language, language: in phrases, in verbal constructs, in poetry, whatever. I’ve never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished—when my editor thinks it’s finished—do I begin the pictures. Then I put the film in my head.

Maurice Sendak

When difficult things can't get done, it's too bad. When easy things can't get done, and there's no good reason, it's more than too bad. It makes everything seem deep down mean and petty.

Richard Russo, Straight Man

#university #life #english department #truth #humor #litfic

Writing is not measured in page counts, I now believe, any more than a writer is defined by publication credits. To be a writer is to make a commitment to the long haul, as one does (especially as one gets older) to keeping fit and healthy for as long a run as possible. For me, this means staying active physically and creatively, switching it up, remaining curious and interested in learning new skills (upon finishing this piece, for instance, I’m going on my final open-water dive to become a certified scuba diver), and of course giving myself ample periods of rest, days or even weeks off. I know that the writer in me, like the lifelong fitness devotee, will be better off.

Bill Hayes, "On Not Writing"

Interview-in-excerpts

I did an interview using excerpts from Naked Summer for my answers—something the website was doing at the time, but they decided not to share my responses, or lost the damn thing, or whatever. After unearthing the interview in a folder today, I decided to share it here.

1. What is writing like?

The pole flexed and bent, but he got nowhere. He waded into deeper water, still winding the line, but the fish didn't budge.

2. What isn’t writing like?

Then all three of us left for the bar.

3. When you do it, why?

Above all, he’d keep quiet and to himself and try to forget this, and work to be different than the adults he knew. Nothing had been decided, he reminded himself. He couldn’t give up just yet.

4. When you don’t, why?

I could have made better decisions, like quitting my job and finding another kind of living. I felt as pinned as the downed phone lines along the road, caught under a sequence of bad choices.

TOTALLY ADDICTED.

#comics #idw #jim steranko #david mazzucchelli #mike mignola #walt simonson #art

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ANDREW SCOTT