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Well, this is two questions, really. For inspiration, I just let my curiousity find a subject to study. You'd be amazed what you can find just surfing random links on Wikipedia... Once I have an inspirational concept, I either do tons of research on related concepts or I just jump in and start writing or improvising (I rarely improvise, however). I'm very verbally inspired, so I get a lot of use from my beat-up old thesaurus. Also useful for inspiration is other pieces of art - sculpture, prose/poetry, paintings, etc.
As far as actually getting ready to sit down and compose, the only thing I need to do is grab a huge glass of water, turn my monitor to portrait mode, grab my research notes or write-ups, and fire up Finale.
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