Lyon, Elizabeth, A writer's guide to nonfiction.

Penguin Putnam. 225p. index, c2003. 0-399-52867-9. $13.95. A

Lyon, who wrote Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write and The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit, has written a direct, fairly easy-to-follow guide to writing nonfiction. The first book in the Writer's Compass series, A Writer's Guide to Nonfiction is arranged in a manner that might seem a bit cliched at first: North, South, East, and West. A closer look, however, shows that this method of arrangement makes sense. For example, the sub-heading for "North" is "Getting Your Bearings," which includes topics such as "What Do I want to Say?" and "How Do I Begin?" "South" is devoted to troubleshooting your writing; "East" is devoted to marketing your nonfiction piece; and "West" is devoted to "Exploring New Horizons."

What separates this book from other books in the "How To Write" genre? The "maps," which are not really maps per se, but a list of guidelines to help writers get organized--even before they write a single word of a book or article. These maps help writers organize their ideas, determine who their audience is, and figure out how to do research for particular types of nonfiction pieces. Some other maps include books written by other authors as examples of suggested reading. Map 8-1, for example, is "A Reading List of Outstanding Memoirs," and it lists these memoirs in sub-categories, such as "On Bad Childhoods," "On Happy Childhoods." and "Going To Schools."

I also appreciate that many different types of nonfiction are explored, such as travel writing, technical writing, self-help writing, and inspirational writing. This is a nice change from books that assume that all "nonfiction" writing is, say, news-paper article writing. I'm sometimes confused by how the categories are arranged; for example, I don't understand how inspirational writing can be considered a "how-to" article.

A Writer's Guide ... is strong when it comes to describing how to structure, organize, and research your nonfiction piece, and how to tailor and market your piece to a target audience. The book's weakness is the lack of examples of other authors' work--I personally find it useful to look at a few paragraphs from pieces by other authors, to get the gist of how a writing technique can actually be put into action. This book would be extremely helpful for a writing teacher to help convey to his or her students the importance of organization in the process of writing. Janice Bees, Chicago, IL