Are you up for some honesty here? Genre fiction is writing thats done for money. Great art doesnt do all that well in a commercial society. Nothing that Franz Kafka wrote ever appeared in print while he was alive. Miss Lonelyhearts sank without a ripple. Great literary art is difficult to read because you have to think when you read it, and most people would rather not.
Epic fantasy can be set in this world. You dont have to create a new universe just to write one. My original doodle, however, put us off-world immediately. Its probably that off-world business in Tolkien that causes us to be lumped together with science fiction, and we have no business on the same rack with SF. SF writers are technology freaks who blithely ignore that footnote in Einsteins theory of relativity which clearly states that when an object approaches the speed of light, its mass becomes infinite. (So much for warp-drive.) If old Buck Rogers hits the gas-pedal a little too hard, hell suddenly become the universe. Fantasists are magic and shining armor freaks who posit equally absurd notions with incantations, the Will and the Word, or other mumbo-jumbo. They want to build a better screwdriver, and we want to come up with a better incantation. They want to go into the future, and we want to go into the past. We write better stories than they do, though. They get all bogged down in telling you how the watch works; we just tell you what time it is and go on with the story. SF and fantasy shouldnt even speak to each other, but try explaining that to a book-store manager. Try explaining it to a publisher. Forget it.
One last gloomy note. If something doesnt work, dump it even if it means that you have to rip up several hundred pages and a half-years work. More stories are ruined by the writers stubborn attachment to his own overwrought prose than by almost anything else. Let your stuff cool off for a month and then read it critically. Forget that you wrote it, and read it as if you didnt really like the guy who put it down in the first place. Then take a meat-axe to it. Let it cool down some more, and then read it again. If it still doesnt work, get rid of it. Revision is the soul of good writing. Its the story that counts, not your fondness for your own gushy prose. Accept your losses and move on.
All right, Ill let you go for right now. Well talk some more later, but why dont we let Belgarath take over for a while?