The writing impulse seeks its own level and isn’t always given a chance to find it. You can’t make up your mind in a Comp Lit class that you’re going to be a Russian novelist. Or even an American novelist. Or a poet. Young writers find out what kind of writers they are by experiment. If they choose from the outset to practice exclusively a form of writing because it is praised in the classroom or otherwise carries appealing prestige, they are vastly increasing the risk inherent in taking up writing in the first place. It is easy to misjudge yourself and get stuck in the wrong genre. You avoid that, early on, by writing in every genre. If you are telling yourself you’re a poet, write poems. Write a lot of poems. If fewer than one work out, throw them all away; you’re not a poet. Maybe you’re a novelist. You won’t know until you have written several novels.

John McPhee, “Editors & Publishers,” Draft no. 4, pp. 78-9.

…no two writers are the same, like snowflakes and fingerprints. No one will ever write in just the way you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is strictly a matter of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

John McPhee, “Editors & Publishers,” Draft no. 4, p. 82.