The Red Pencil is Your Best Friend

By Carol Baldwin “What? Are you crazy?” That’s what you probably thought when you read the title of this article: “I hate getting my paper back from my teacher with corrections all over it. You must be crazy!” Crazy? No. Knowledgeable about the writing process? Yes. Consider these facts. Fact #1: My first book, Friendship Counseling, had over 20,000 words eliminated before it was published. Fact #2: My second book, Teaching the Story, was re-written several times before it saw the light of day. There were so many revisions I lost track of them. Fact #3:  My third book, Half-Truths, is a work-in-progress. It started as a picture book, morphed into a book for 4th grade boys, and is now a historical novel for middle-school students. It took me several...

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