I was reading Bill Bruford's blog recently and a similar topic kind of came up - he was arguing that people should be judged on their entire body of work rather than just their most successful works. I have to disagree in that I think each work should be judged on its merit alone. Just because you aren't actively creating something or have created something that people subjectively dislike, doesn't mean that your previous good work should be ignored or valued less. And when it comes to some authors for example, like Harper Lee or J. D. Salinger, who wrote one successful book and then were hounded to write more, I believe that if you have contributed something of value to the public canon, you should be left alone if you no longer want to contribute further. Furthermore I often see a tendency for critics to praise one work (i.e. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five) and then pan subsequent works (such as his follow-up novel Breakfast of Champions, which I actually enjoyed more personally). So it's a no-win scenario - write something good, don't write more - why aren't you writing? write something else - not up to par.

So yeah, the "why aren't they doing more" question I don't really agree with. I think it comes from a place of entitlement - we as the audience want more to consume. The person creating the media should be respected to create at their own pace.