Pantsing for fun and profit. Essay. 800 words, 4-minute read.
Gandy Dancers
By Ray Tabler
A gandy dancer was a railroad worker of days gone by. They laid and maintained tracks, shifting the rails into alignment with a purpose-built, 5-foot-long lever called a lining tool, or colloquially a “gandy.” Working in teams, the gandy dancers moved heavy rails by muscle power alone. Each man heaved in a practiced, chant-synchronized rhythm, dancing the steel across the roadbed. Hence the term, “gandy dancers.”
My life touched briefly and tangentially on this forgotten fragment of Americana when I was an intern at a chemical plant in Tennessee. An old draftsman told me a story of when a railroad spur was to be laid into the factory from the main line in the 1950s. Following company policy, a detailed plan was drawn up to show exactly how the spur rails were to curve gracefully right up to the intended end of track. Weeks were invested crafting these drawings.
Come the appointed morning, the rail crew arrived bright and early, and jumped off the flatbed rail car at the fenceline. The plant engineering manager proudly presented the gang boss with the crisp blueprints. The crusty, old gang boss glanced at the plans without touching them, and said, “I don’t need those. Where do you want it to start? Where do you want it to end?”
Then the gandy dancers laid the railroad spur with only hand tools, relying solely on hard-won skill and experience. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the track is still in use to this day. Assuming proper maintenance of course.
Since becoming a writer, this anecdote lingers in my head as a metaphor for discovery writing, pantsing. Writing by the seat of your pants. Pantsers are in a manner of speaking the gandy dancers of the literary world. Head down, dancing the story along via will alone, guided by the rhythm only we can hear. We know where we started, and may have an idea of where to end up. Everything between depends upon the flow and warp of the ground encountered.
There are doubtless better ways to run a railroad, or build one. But this is the one which appeals to us. Sometimes pantsers outline. Sometimes plotters discovery write. However, typically one or the other method is preferred by a given individual. And habitually employed.
A metaphor can be stretched too far. Let’s see how taut we can get this one before it breaks.
Like the gandy dancers, pansters tend to be self-taught, or at least not formally trained in the art of stitching words to the page. We feel our way along, learning by trial and error, lots of error. Skill is bought by making mistakes and (it is hoped) learning from them.
That’s a fine way to do it, laying track across relatively flat prairie. Unfortunately, sometimes mountains and chasms get in the way. Then, a blueprint is required. It would be foolish to simply span a ravine by gosh and by golly, shoveling dirt by eye to secure the trestle foundations. I wouldn’t ride a train across such a construction. It’s likely to collapse at the worst moment.
Writing a mystery novel is a suitable analogy for a literary railroad bridge. All the pieces have to fit together, and support the reader throughout the story. One revealed clue leads to the next, and seemingly extraneous facts salted early on loom large as the mystery is unraveled. The mystery reader is an analytical type, scrutinizing each revelation with a critical eye. Perhaps it is possible to discovery write a mystery, but very difficult. The author is solving the mystery in real time. Can be done. But then the writer has to go back and plant clues for the reader along the plotline. And, honestly, isn’t that simply creating an extremely detailed outline with your first draft?
I do not seek to denigrate outlining. Nor do I glorify discovery writing. They each have their place, and purpose. I prefer the freedom of pantsing, to be honest. The cost of that is to steer away from certain types of writing. Like the gandy dancer was limited to dancing steel across the roadbed by chant and by feel. We know where we want it to start, and probably have a vague idea of where to end up. In between depends on the dance.
END.
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