You asked for problems with creativity and writing. I will give you the back story first.

I belonged to a writer’s group when I was a student and they kept panning my short stories without feedback so I focused on my tech-writing class. I wrote a couple dozen letters to the editor after that. A three-sentence one made it into the Economist!

I never stopped writing fiction or letters. I read Strunk & White’s 4th ed. ["The Elements of Style" -- ed.] more than a few times, and Kerouac’s and Vonnegut’s tips, and Stephen King’s writing book and have tried to follow his suggestions to write a lot and read a lot. I taught composition for a year at the university level at a teacher’s college in central China and wrote my first novel at my next university gig in China. [After I read Tobias Wolff’s "The Barracks Thief," I wished I'd edited my first novel to a fishbone!]

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