This week was fortuitous.  While studying the Quran, I found what I was looking for.  Something fell into place for me.  The next day I began writing the latest opening to my book.  For over a year, I have been honing the opening, over and over, circling around a correct thesis, without seeing it.

I could not write a book without a one-sentence summary.  What would I say without a thesis?  Each of the previous openings was built around a sentence that never could get me quite to the end of the book.  These statements couldn’t take my narrative to where I wanted it to go.  This week this changed.  Such a simple thesis, and I could not see it until now.

The day after this realization, I began building out the latest model of my book.  For the past two years, I have been using an application called FreeMind.  It is open-source mind-mapping software.  It works well.  But it is not ideal.  During the past couple of years, I have sketched out quite a few models.  During the past few days, I had been thinking hard on my book.  The morning after, I built the best model yet of the vision that has guided me in this project.

The day after that, I began writing.  My mind maps tend to resemble trees with branches. This is fortunately or not due to the design of the software.  Since I began using FreeMind to help me write, I envisioned the full draft as a process of filling out the leaves on each branch.  That is where I am at right now.  The sled is moving again, and picking up steam.