translating technical stuff requires preserving the meaning and the style, but not subtleties, which i think should be preserved in fiction. not all fiction, maybe, but still translators always have a number of options - for any word, turn, construction, everything. that may be not so bad for someone, but my uncertainty makes me stall at every option and worry that i make a wrong choice (spoiling someone else's thing -or even baby - entrusted to me).
with all this variety in translation, you're still completely restricted by the original text. in art, you have choices too, and they may be difficult, but since you create an original thing, your choices are mostly unlimited, which means freedom. too many options means you don't need to think of options at all.
i've tried translating a few pages of Marina Tsvetaeva memoirs into english a long time ago, and i remember that it in fact was much more fun than the other way around: exactly because i have fewer options when writing in english! or because i don't have a perfect command of most patterns, they are still not fixed, not so overused as the russian ones. creativity shrinks as patterns kick in, and i'm bored by nearly all patterns in the russian language. which means that i cannot use them in any way that is not boring.