As a writer and cognition-enjoyer, much of the reading I do has been done by people who were using that writing as an adjunct to their own thoughts.

Producing a bunch of filler content to pad things out is the opposite direction from most of the reading that I have found helpful. In fact, shortening works seems to be the main part of good writing. I don't generally want to watch a 4-hour film that could have been a tight 50 minutes. I don't want to read 800 pages that could have been a solid 200.

I'm not reading for distraction, and if I were Zane Gray and Robotech and Harliquin romance novels already have that filled- heck, I could just re-read Cujo (which probably wasn't edited very much at all, admittedly).

Generating a ton of crap, as you note, has never been a problem.

Getting rid of the 4-8 paras of thoughtlessness has always been the real work in my experience.