Yes. Writing isn't just being creative, or thought-provoking. It's hours of work. And not always fun, seemingly productive work. It's going back over sentences and trying to pick out the clichés, or trying to frame a scene in a truer way (which is pretty hard since everything is basically coming from somewhere. Nothing is written from a vacuum). Thinking that you are somehow naturally better than successfully published authors is also precisely the wrong attitude to take, because part of being a writer means having to be open to improvement. And what seems like an improvement for some might be a step backwards for others.

The whole thing sounds exhausting, really. And I'm mostly basing this off what I've learned from writers, as my most intense experience so far has been the excruciating (for me) task of completing my thesis. That was only about 50 pages!