I have to admit it. I have not kept all of my musical ideas, and have certainly not used all of them. But I have kept many more. There are still ideas I have in my head that I may or may not use, but I believe it is important not to discard any ideas. Sometimes you may think an idea will be great for one piece, but it turns up in another, as was the case for Stravinsky when he took ideas from a piano concerto and used them in his Symphony in Three Movements. Sometimes composers will use ideas in multiple pieces, as Mahler did in his Third and Fourth Symphonies.
The important thing to remember is that no idea should be dismissed as "bad." My mother used to implore me to keep my musical ideas, to not discard my papers. I have kept most of them, and I get a kick out of some of my ideas from when I was very young and just getting started in music. They make me smile a bit at their naivite, but I also appreciate the genuinely unique ideas I had.
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