The Book Doctor's Little Black Bag: Facing up to goodness – Getting to the Good Parts ...: Symptoms and diagnosis: "Mary Sue" is a term in literary analysis/nitpicking that is something like "paranoia" or "neurotic" ...
As life drifts back into normality, I'm getting back to some longrunning projects, one of which is The Book Doctor's Little Black Bag, in which I share some of the tricks I learned as a book doctor. Plenty about it over there, including a warning page about the audience: most of this was originally things I explained to people who were almost-publishable. It may not be applicable to beginning writers (or it might; i'm simply not worrying about them, as heaven knows there are plenty of sites and workshops for them).
This particular episode is about Mary Sue-ism, and especially about how fixing it can lead you to better things than just a repair and an acceptance.
