Anyone got Terry Goodkind on speed dial?

As I sit and contemplate the different characters in my fictional world and the world that they inhabit I come to appreciate just how much work goes into being a fantasy writer. You don’t just have to think about elves and gnomes and such like but you have to create whole towns, cities, infrastructure and make them believable. I mean how do they do it? There is so much to describe and explore before I even contemplate what the story will be. Will there be religion like we know it, worshiping different Gods or would everyone just pray to the sun? Will there be vehicles and what would they look like? What about race and culture, individuals with their own unique personalities and goals in life. Being a fantasy writer as with being most other fiction writers there is a great deal to think about. I can’t help thinking about Spiderman as I am writing this. “With great power comes great responsibility” As a writer you have the power to say who will live and who will die, you can kill much loved characters off with a pen stroke, as any reader or watcher of Game of Thrones will contest to. I suppose it is a bit like being a God. Would God have this much stress over whether men and women would walk the earth and what was he thinking when he created such funny looking things as a platypus? As I very much doubt anyone has a hotline to the big Guy, I’d settle for a call from someone who knows what it’s like  to write fantasy and who can give me a few pointers as to where on earth do I start? How did other fantasy writers come up with such wonderful worlds? Tolkien even came up with a different language. I don’t think Terry Goodkind’s readers would find it as believable if Richard in the Sword of Truth series was prancing about with a sword in Tesco in Maesteg. Maybe I need to channel the dear departed wonderful Terry Pratchett, a personal favourite of mine. The imagination is stirring, but the mind is a bit overwhelmed, now whose got that number?