Lots of engineers are music minors… Both are very mathematical. At large schools like Michigan 1/3 of the school band are engineers… Just saying
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You need to know that @Knowsstuff’s son is a successful Industrial Engineer. What is applicable for IE can be detrimental for nearly every other discipline. IE is a systems and organizational job, 30,000 foot view so to speak. The people that hire for disciplines that are down in the weeds, computer engineering for example, will see courses like entrepreneurship and business classes and get the impression that your heart isn’t in staying in the weeds where they are hiring you for. @HPuck35 hired lots of engineers and might be able to speak more to this.
This is a good point that this might not apply to everyone. Not a successful engineer yet… He graduates this Saturday 
So IOE is like business engineering so my son’s minors actually make sense but Engineering Academic Concentrations, Minors and Supplemental Studies – Bulletin
To keep adding at Michigan they said do minors if you want to but double majoring didn’t really add value in the real world.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. 
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Creative writing and technical writing are quite different. The latter is critically important to engineering, but the OP spoke of doing the former.
Even engineers would concede it’s possible to excel at both, wouldn’t they?
Oh, no doubt! The question in this case is at what cost. If the OP has to forego multiple tech classes to take writing classes, that will have some impact on how their resume is perceived, maybe for better, but far more likely for worse.
Whatever impact it has on their resume will be at best single-use. After the first job, non-major college coursework won’t matter. I think it adds a layer to the resume that differentiates (positively).
Being a better writer will matter at every job they will ever have…and the OP wants to do it.
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Instead of trying to check the boxes for an official minor, why not use your elective space to take technical and non-technical courses that are of interest to you and potentially useful for future goals? The official minors may give some suggestions about what may be of interest, but choosing courses of your interest without being restricted to them may be more satisfying to you.
Japanese is considered a more difficult language for English speakers, so it may require more courses/credits to get to a specified level of proficiency than in some other language like French or Spanish (unless you already have some proficiency from high school or as a heritage speaker that will place you into a more advanced course to start).
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This is unfortunately incorrect. For example, the difference between the typical Fluid Dynamics that all MEs take and Continuum Mechanics is huge. It isn’t typically something one picks up on the job as it requires learning a completely new math (Tensor Calculus). You either have that depth or you don’t. It will lead to opportunities that those lacking it will be locked out of.
I’m not saying that creative writing is not the right choice for the OP. What is indisputable is that it will come at a cost. In any curriculum saying yes to something means saying no to something else.
I’m not sure The Goal is relevant to OPs question, but I certainly recommend it as a good read, especially to anyone in a factory/production engineering position. I haven’t read it in 25-30 years, but I have an autographed copy hanging around somewhere in my office.
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That book is interesting. Much like the E Myth, it’s written in an amateurish way, but the concept is very powerful.
One of the advantages of coming in with credit is that it allows you a lighter load than many might have. In engineering this is typically a good thing. You will be doing a lot more work than you did in HS and all of it will be much more time consuming. My D was a Chem E that went into Purdue with 42 credit hours. This allowed her to reduce her academic load to 13-14 hours per semester and she played in their orchestra which was another 2 hours. It allowed her to work on a research project later in her Purdue education and she also did a 5 term coop (it didn’t affect her time completing her degree it was still 5 years with the coop). Can you get a minor unrelated to engineering? Possibly. I would wait to commit to that until you get a sense of just how well you handle the work load. It can be surprising even to the best of students. One thing I would recommend is that Purdue has a very large engineering career fair in the fall. It would be a good place to go and talk to people about their companies and find out who hires Computer Engineers and for what types of positions. You may even find out if they hire coops and then determine if you are interested in one. Good luck.
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My D is also a chem e co-op at Purdue. She considered adding a math minor when she was a freshman but instead took a series of courses to get her certification in collaborative leadership. She was then contemplating adding a concentration but the course selections were too rigid. She loves her co-op company (a polymer company) and has decided to add a bunch of tech electives in material science that aligns with that industry and finance courses because she’s pretty sure an MBA is on the horizon down the road.
My point is that you don’t need to choose anything for right now. You may find that what you think you want may change as you have more experience in your courses and with internships.
Boiler up!
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I really appreciate everyone’s replies. I definitely have a lot to think about 
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It is since it’s an engineer doing creative writing…
I wouldn’t call that book creative writing. The principle is important, but the book itself is a technical book with a badly written allegory woven into it. 
Totally creative the way he did it. Great book that’s still relevant today… Lol