Maybe 10 years ago at a family reunion, a cousin was complaining to me that her son wasn't getting any traction as a “writer”. Now this son either was still in college, had dropped out or had just graduated. I no longer remember which “state of being” he was in. I just remember blurting out, ‘What the heck does he have to write about? He hasn't done anything!” Of course later I got a lecture from my mother, my father & my wife for my lack of couth and how I had gotten that side of the family all mad at me. I told them I didn't care and since I lived 10 hours away from the part of the family I really really didn't care. I got another lecture on how I can't go through life so unsociable. Well I have and I will continue to be so!
William Shakespeare didn’t “do” anything except churn out the greatest body of literature the world — not just the English speaking world — has ever known.
There is no evidence he ever met a king. Or a prince. Or even an Italian. Or had been to a magic island. Or a magic forest.
He made it all up.
That’s what good writers do.
George Lucas, if you want to stick to sci-fi, didn’t “do” anything except go to college — and then create “Star Wars.”
Oh, and about your cousin’s son? The greatest writer America has produced, F. Scott Fitzgerald, graduated college and started writing. He was a successful novelist at age 23, after a brief failed stint in advertising.
Your thesis — that writers have to somehow “do” things to write — is unsupported by the facts of who successful writers are and what they’ve done.