littlemanpoet: I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by mind-gird, but I am guessing it is similiar to a frame of mind.
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So why am I interested in this? Perhaps it has something to do with why people can't get past Tolkien imitation?
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Maybe people cannot get past Tolkien imitation because they are expecting Tolkien imitation and therefore find or make the Tolkien imitation for themselves whether it exists of not. By
find I mean that a reader could find clear Tolkien influence because he was looking for it or even if he was not looking for it and it suddenly occured to him. By
make I mean that a reader who is expecting or looking for Tolkien imitation would be able to take a simple thing, a gold wedding ring for instance, and see it as an imitation. Whether the wedding ring was meant to be an imitation or was simply just background in a story doesn't matter. The reader who is expecting and/or looking for imitation will see it as just that.
An examply of this would be the first time I read the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander (for those who haven't read those books, there are Tolkien influences right down to the very ending, but with many original ideas of the author's own) I was not expecting any Tolkien imitation at all. And I didn't find any. Later, I reread the books expecting to find some Tolkien influenced elements. I found more than a few. When I didn't expect any, I didn't see any. When I did, I saw most of them.