I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something.
I think I'm sort of blind to genre. As long as it has a sort of honesty about it, which I think you'll hear in whatever music you respond to, then I think it doesn't need to be called anything particularly.