Prepare.

Ray Bradbury on feeding and keeping a muse (beginning on page 38)...

When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange—we're so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in. The Muse, to belabor the point then, is there, a fantastic storehouse, our complete being. All that is most original lies waiting for us to summon it forth. And yet we know it is not as easy as that. We know how fragile is the pattern woven by our fathers or uncles or friends, who can have their moment destroyed by a wrong word, a slammed door, or a passing fire-wagon. So, too, embarrassment, self-consciousness, remembered criticisms, can stifle the average person so that less and less in his lifetime can he open himself out. 

Let's say that each of us has fed himself on life, first, and later, on books and magazines. The difference is that one set of events happened to us, and the other was forced feeding. 

If we are going to diet our subconscious, how prepare the menu?

Well, we might start our list like this ...