Catherynne M. Valente On Writing SF

Writer Catherynne M. Valente On Writing SF. An excerpt:

Over the weekend, my second SF story, The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew, was published at Clarkesworld Magazine.

Oh, I know. It's not hard SF. Somehow we'll all survive. But it's been quite a journey this year, learning to change over my thought processes to SF even for those two short stories. Reader, I won't lie, it was hard. Not because SF is inherently more difficult or brainier, but because when one has practiced and worked at writing one kind of literature until you were reasonably good at it, launching into a new kind sort of spins you around and knocks you for three kinds of loops.

Yes, in the end, the aims of every story, no matter the genre, are the same. Characters one cares about, interesting plots and locales, emotional moments and climaxes, all that jazz. But while I've gotten very used to inventing on the folkloric level, to creating fantasy worlds and situations, it really is a different thing to suddenly apply that skill set to SF, which has a whole other set of reader demands and expectations.

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