Experiences In Life vs Ideas Out of Nothingness

Is it our darkest moments that give us inspiration?  Do we only regurgitate what we know?  Or do writers have a special ability to create wonderful new ideas out of nothingness?
I am an infant in the writing world.  I consider myself innocent in this business and even in my personal life.  I claim to have experienced many things in my short time on Earth, but still I can't even imagine some of the feelings that accompany the events that certain writers go through and use like material for their work.  I stumble at the idea of using pain, loss, and tragedy as thread to weave an interesting quilt.  Sure, bright colors are more compelling when compared to darker ones.  Is it necessary to have more experiences in order to create better stories?
My main character, Daisy Gale, in my (hopefully) soon-to-be debut novel, deals with many tribulations that I have never experienced in real life.  However, my own mother called me in distress after reading certain chapters to interrogate me on the truthfulness of some of the events.  "Did that ever happen to you?" she kept asking.  "You can tell me anything, I'm here for you!"
What I'm trying to say is that I believe within all of us is the ability to empathize so deeply that we can stir up emotions we have never actually felt before.  When I was in my first year of college, I studied acting.  One of my teachers swore up and down that the only way to truly be 100% real on camera was to BE the part.  No pretending, actually being.  If you're character is an insomniac, stop sleeping.  If you're character has eating disorders, then you should too.  Of course, I thought that was way ridiculous and if you can't act well enough to be convincing with pretending alone then you aren't really much of an actor.  But I remembered what he said because I feel, in a less extreme way, his theory applies to writing.
Daisy Gale is similar to me in many ways, I make my foundation something that I know.  When it comes to the things that she experiences that I never have (thankfully; I tend to torture my protagonists a little) I just imagine what it would be like.  I close my eyes, or lay awake in my quite bed, and play out the events in my head.  Every attack, every awkward moment, every character on scene, I play out what I would do if I was them.  I factor in their personalities (as I writer, I feel that I didn't create them, they have always been known to me), I think about their setting, I alter things as I go to see where the results will get me.
I believe that is how stories write themselves.  I know what I want to happen, but so much like life, goals and what actually results from events don't always line up.  The story of Daisy Gale began as all my stories do, with notebook pages filled with outlines, ideas, character descriptions, and drawings.  I love to look back on them after the book is finished and see everything I never could put in because the events went in a different direction than I originally planned.
So much like life are the stories I write.