Gerald Weinberg has written a wonderful book "Weinberg on Writing" http://www.amazon.com/Weinberg-Writing-Fieldstone-Gerald-M/d... where he outlines his "Field Stone" method. It's an approach that likens writing a book to constructing what the Irish call "dry stone fence." You write capsules and modules that you have energy around and then gradually re-work them into a narrative once you have a good understanding of the topic and how you want to proceed. He also ha a blog at http://weinbergonwriting.blogspot.com/ devoted to his thoughts on writing. If you are unfamiliar with him, he is a bestselling technical author (and now fiction) who has written more than 40 books.