Dangling participle in the first paragraph

Years ago, I was read­ing aloud a piece I had new­ly writ­ten to a will­ing lis­ten­er, want­i­ng to both hear it myself, and to get some kind of objec­tive reac­tion. After read­ing for about half an hour, I stopped. “Well,” I asked, “What do you think?”

The first thing the per­son said was, “There’s a dan­gling par­tici­ple in the first paragraph.”

Keep in mind I had been read­ing for half an hour, which meant that my lis­ten­er was so focused on that dan­gling par­tici­ple (in the first para­graph!) that very lit­tle of what else I read could have made any impres­sion. Now I have very lit­tle doubt there was that gram­mat­i­cal error in that first para­graph, but as a crit­i­cal response, it made me not to want to hear any more of this person’s reactions.

Crit­i­cism is always hard to take. It also must be said that crit­i­cism is also hard to give. To lead off with negation—no mat­ter how justified—is to invite a defen­sive response. While it can be described as a cliché, if you can­not find some­thing to say that is pos­i­tive, you might as well say noth­ing at all.

It is not often ref­er­enced, but when there is writ­ing, there is always crit­i­cism of that writ­ing. It may come from your best friend, your writ­ing group, your edi­tor, these days a blog, or online crit­i­cal forum, or from some pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­is­tic response. My point is that crit­i­cism is always part of the writ­ing process. Even if you claim to pay no atten­tion to it—and I have heard some writ­ers say that—it has impact.

These days—particularly with most­ly anony­mous internet—criticism can often be harsh, and even abu­sive, reveal­ing more about the crit­ic than the work being cri­tiqued. That said, unless you get a crit­i­cal response (pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, or a mix there­of) you can­not learn from what you have done.

Crit­i­cism is one of the more painful aspects of writ­ing, but in the end, it is critical.