It’s funny you mention temptation, because I stumbled upon this approach because after a few years into a novel, I got very sick of working the same story over day in and day out. Yet I could not set it aside very long for fear of never finishing. At the same time, other ideas seemed a thousand times more interesting. Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence thoughts, I guess. Eventually I gave into the diversions and wrote a few short stories, which provided enough distance to remind me why I started down the novel road in the first place. Luckily it did not derail the final product, but if I kept on working on an open ended time-frame like that without a plan, it just might have.

So began the idea hopper.

In between there and here, I granted myself permission to walk away from all unfinished manuscripts except one. And I made the exception for selfish reasons. Because I think this one might be the sort of genesis project that while its appeal is narrow, and the theme intensely personal, stepping through the emotions could improve my writing. Ultimately, it’s just for me, and I’m OK with that kind of self-absorbed thinking in this instance. Every writer deserves at least one project that is solely theirs, start to finish.

I admire your logical approach, and wish I had followed it. However, as I still have over a year’s (probably 2 or 3) worth of work on revising half-written novels, I just consign my ideas to the mental garbage bin. If any of them are worthwhile, I hope they’ll have composted nicely by the time I get to look at them again.

I think if I wrote them down, the temptation to start work on them at once would be too great.