I think it really comes down to motivation. Everyone knows you have to practice and practice to get good at anything. It's the motivation to practice that is the hard part. It's easier to stay motivated when you set goals that you actually like as opposed to goals that you think may lead to success. That's how I learned to program. I told myself that I wanted to build Z. I didn't try and practice first by building a bunch of little A's, B's, and C's instead. I shot straight for Z from the start. Yeah, I screwed up a lot and had to redo everything like 100 times, but I was motivated to get to Z. I could care less about A, B, and C, but I ended up knocking them down along the way anyway.
If your dream is to write a novel, make it your goal to write a novel! Why would you be motivated to write in some literary journal instead? (I'm trying to write a spy novel myself, and I sure as hell don't care about my college's literary journal. I'm 100% certain that trying to get anything published in something like that would suck all the motivation out of me. Plus, how can someone honestly tell me that would help toward my original goal? I think you get better at writing spy novels by... writing spy novels.)
If you've ever been in a band, you know the hardest part is keeping everyone motivated enough to stick to a consistent practice schedule. I've been in bands where a leader-type thinks he knows some guaranteed method to getting 'discovered'. Every time we would try to follow that method, we would all burn out because it wasn't fun and it was demotivating when the method would inevitably turn out to be flawed or unrealistically demanding. We would have had a much longer life span if we stuck to setting goals that kept everyone motivated instead of trying to follow some unproven method.
So, I say target the motivation, not the method.