False Analogy

I was going to draw an analogy between cooking and writing, but the similarities are minimal. Cooking can take hours to prepare and minutes to eat. Writing takes a lot more time than reading, but that's the general difference between creation and consumption. An artist will take months to paint or sculpt something worth displaying in a gallery, but the average person will merely glance at it, or at most stare for a minute or two. Fine details are for geeks and fanatics.

If you write something that is entertaining but isn't very good, very few people will notice the mediocrity and even fewer will be able to explain the shortcomings. You have to be comfortable with the speed of your improvement or you'll never keep going. Writers that create "young adult" fiction are often treated as grade school teachers. "Sure, you're published, but all your fans are children. Let me know when you can communicate on an adult level." This is often a style choice, or even a marketing decision made by the publisher. It really says nothing about the writer other than how accessible they want their books to be. 

There is always a gap between the writer and reader, and it is up to the writer to build most of the bridge. You have to decide by the end how far you are going to reach before your concept is compromised by the accommodation. Factors that will affect the reach of your work include: limited scope, artistic freedom, literary allusions, grammar grade level, idea complexity, image density, tropes (used honestly and ironically), verbosity, etc and so on. It's all part of your style, and learning how to follow your instincts while consciously controlling these factors is the great challenge of creative writing. And it's loads of fun.

The more I read, the more I suck

This is how I write: "Rubbish rubbish rubbish. Rubbish better rubbish. Oops, I think I stole that bit. This is crap. It's just like that thing I read, but awful. Everyone will notice the similarity and think I stole it. I better start over."

If I compare my writing to my old writing, I'm much better than I used to be. If I compare myself to published authors, I'm crap. My hurdle for the day is to finish my crap first draft, no matter how crap it is.