How can you teach someone to be creative? You have to create yourself.

In fact, the very phrase "teaching creative writing" sounds to me oxymoronic. How can you teach someone to be creative?

How can you teach someone to be creative? You have to create yourself.

I must say that, on the whole, I prefer fiction to poetry.

Except for the usual house chores, doing income tax, etc., I am free to write whenever I want.

I find that biographical material holds me back, hampers my creative process, cramps my imagination.

I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I think it was within three years of coming to the US that I started writing in English, although purely for myself, not trying to get it published. Living in America, I was constantly in touch with English, and Ukrainian was for me a private language.