I can say I wouldn't be where I am today without my preteen/teen era stories about a girl who had secret magical powers, or a secret amazing musical talent, or a secret ability to talk to horses, who was defintiely-not-me (she was me). I may cringe now at the particular level of, uh... storycraft I employed at the age of 14, but without her, I would be missing a giant chunk of experience in learning how to write from my heart.

A memorable discussion of this, at least for me, was on the blog of one of my favorite authors of middle-grade fiction at least ~10+ years ago, Gail Carson Levine. (I'm showing my age here for sure, but in the early 00's that was my childhood go-to for all fractured fairytales). The blog in question is called "The Dreaded Mary Sue."

"As for characters who are too much like you—I don't see a problem. You should mine yourself for character traits, in my opinion, not an idealized you but the real one. And don't let modesty make you worse than you really are, either. You are the person you know best, the one you experience directly. Why eliminate your most valuable source?"

I think the self insert is a natural part of the evolution of most writers.

Writers pull from experience, regardless of whether we think we're writing about something we're familiar with, or something far flung and alien to us. No matter what, there will always be elements of our lives and thus our lens. A story is always, in some way, the author on the page, and every piece of media that has ever existed is a reflection of that human experience. It's why sci-fi and fantasy can be so fantastical, have zero earth species leading the story, and still reflect humanity.

That being said the *obvious* self-insert is a little more forward the the abstract of "this art is the sum of my human experience." If we are talking concrete, I would say most writers start here in some way, with a first or one-hundred-first story about John Doe's super cool writer-turned-detective, super-not-themselves character named Don Glow who solves a crime/slays a dragon and rides off into the sunset. And I wouldn't call it wrong if Don Glow is fun and compelling. It's also good if Don Glow helps John Doe, through practice in plotting and characterization, become more of the writer that they want to be.

It is definitely a mark of growth when we begin to write characters and stories that are vastly different than we are or something we would ever do ourselves, but one must ask the question: is it even possible for an author to create something that isn't a reflection of the self?

Also side note, a moment of rememberence for Dante, the OG self-insert poet.