The answer is already in the quote "... when the time is ripe." I don't know how is it for you, but I always know when a subject is ready to come out... I simply cannot keep it close no more... Is has happened to me sometimes: I started a project, went on quicky, then, all of a sudden I had to drop it... If I were going to force it, it won't work... So, I usually drop it... It had happened sometimes that it had come on my mind again, so vivid, calling aloud to be carried on, that I simply had to go back to it... After how much time? I cannot tell, really... Sometimes it has been sleeping for months, sometimes for years... There are even some pieces that are still in that sort of limbo, and I really cannot tell when they'll be ripe, if they ever will be ripe... For all that I know regarding them just now, I can immagine that they are lost forever... But, as I said, I cannot tell if tomorrow, or in a dozen years, I'll find my long ago forgotten characters and projects walking by my side and screaming in my ears untill I put again my hands on them... One thing I've learned: I've stopped to put timing on my dreams, I simply let them to be just dreams untill they ask themseves to come real... Five novels in five years? I really cannot work thus, if I've got five ideas, good! Let them quarrel to come out... Let them withdraw when they are tired or not more satisfying... Will they be all out in five years? I think not, maybe there will be just one, maybe even completely different from the idea of the beginning, maybe the other four can not come out because they already put pieces out of them in the only one to which I gave birth... Maybe my problem, or my good luck, is simply that my dreams are true shapeshifters... (And that I never run out of new dreams...) Okay, you asked, so...