"Rule One: If you do anything to increase the protagonist's power, or make their life easier, you must also amplify their opponent or add extra difficulties to their life. You can't make Frodo a Jedi unless you give Sauron the Death Star. Otherwise, even if it is well-written in all other ways, your story will suck because the reader will know to expect an unending string of easy victories, leading them to neither wonder or care about what happens next. The Mary Sue is not defined by her power being too strong, but by her challenges being too easily overcome."

The First Law of Fanfiction, from Less Wrong, author account for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. /u/2269863/

I write both to better myself as a writer and for the pleasure of writing; my stories here might be produced by one attitude or the other. Whichever the case, the stories I post here won't ever make it to one of the major publishing houses, but some of the lessons I learn creating them might.

I'll be posting Authors Notes, answering questions, and responding to reviews on my Tumblr account at http:///. I am leaving the anonymous option on, so if you want an answer to a question or review without revealing your identity, please feel free to use the ask feature.

Harry Potter and the Gaining of Power: [Chapter 8 ... I'm working on it. It's just unaccountably boring right now. The chapter, not the work. The work is great.]
Some of the things I'm hoping to get better at with this story are magic as a protagonist's tool, horror, and dialogue. Chapter five focuses very strongly on a single character's point of view, and was subsequently very difficult to write compared to the first four chapters. This particular story was inspired at least partially by the story Time Braid by ShaperV (at /s/5193644/1/) and its description of the different types of Chakra. I'll be exploring that idea at least a little as applied to the HP characters' magic.
With thanks to: Aria Dragoncrest for her insightful review of Chapter Four, which has led to what I feel is an improvement to that chapter.

The Self-Insert Series:
These stories, I write for fun; I write because the world I choose displeases me or inspires me. I take the place of a character, with my knowledge of the world, but with at least some of the character's abilities, and I poke and prod at the world as I see fit. Sometimes this makes things better for the characters (now me), sometimes it does not. These will largely be one-shots, but if I happen to experience a deluge of inspiration for any one world, they might be coalesced into their own story. These are generally written because if I don't put them down, they won't stop bouncing around in my head.