Perhaps. It does seem that you shifted to goalpost a bit from “a person needs to suffer” to “you need to have experiences outside the norm.” Personally, I think great stories are all around us, there are many different paths to great art, and that many of us know from birth that we don’t fit into the contours of normal life — no trauma required. It is interesting that some writers of the most odd, surreal, and imaginative fiction have had eminently normal lives. But there are exceptions, too, and “art” or “weird” in any field are both very subjective.