Though mostly silent on social media these days, I am aware of the earthquake taking place in the kidlit world. That’s the most accurate metaphor I can think of to describe this long overdue upending of the status quo. It’s the kind of event that leaves everyone shaken, and makes you question things you had assumed to be foundational, or self-evident. Perhaps some of us were unaware of the underlying fault line that has ruptured, or the depths to which it reached. In the interest of owning my own part in this, I’m the latter. I’ve been peripherally aware of these issues, but I haven’t ever undertaken the kind of examination that would have revealed the full reach of this problem. Because yes, this industry that I cherish has a problem. A very big and deeply ingrained problem. I wish I had been more fully aware of it before now, and I’m sorry that it took this earthquake for me to see it. My heart breaks for the women who have been harassed, devalued, and victimized. If that is you, then I want you to know that I believe you.

The fault line revealed by this earthquake needs to be addressed, urgently, and I want to do my part. I fear that this chasm, which has always been there, but only now opened wide enough at the surface for everyone to see, has the potential to divide our community of writers, and it already seems to be doing just that. Some people are actively taking sides and rejecting the claims of the other. To some degree, that is expected. It’s human nature to reject information that makes us feel uncomfortable. After all, belief seeks the path of least resistance; if we are passive in our beliefs, we go through life avoiding dissonance and hard truths the way a river avoids certain terrain on its way to the sea.

We might say to ourselves, “I know the accused, and they would never do that.” But that is the easier path. That is simply another way of saying that we don’t want to re-examine our assumptions and biases, which is evidenced by the speed at which people have already decamped into their corners, where they seem to be digging in for a lengthy siege before the facts are known. That some of the accusations are anonymous seems adequate justification for rejection, by some, even though the accused may not have even denied the claims. The harder path in all of this, the active path, is to allow for the possibility that we might have been wrong about someone. We might have been wrong about lots of people, or even an entire industry.

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Right now, there are women who need our support, and none of us have the right to judge the validity of their experiences, or the validity of their responses to those experiences. If you ever find yourself deciding for someone else how they should think and feel about something, well, speaking as a psychologist, you’re engaging in a form of psychological abuse. If you’re doing it to a victim, you’re victimizing them all over again.

Just stop it.

Now.

And listen.

“Only for a moment did the spirit glimmer there. Then the sallow oval between Ged’s arms grew bright. It widened and spread, a rent in the darkness of the earth and night, a ripping open of the fabric of the world. Through it blazed a terrible brightness. And through that bright misshapen breach clambered something like a clot of black shadow, quick and hideous…”

As a twelve-soon-to-turn-thirteen-year-old boy, that moment in A Wizard of Earthsea stopped me. I’d been given what was at that time the Earthsea trilogy of books for Christmas, and I remember blinking at the page when I first read that scene and those words. I was aware even then, in a slow and plodding, newly awakening kind of way that something powerful was happening. I went back and reread that scene, those sentences. Then I read them again, and again, and again, until my inner ear heard them not as words in a book to be read, but for what they were: an incantation, an enchantment, a spell.

I realized then that Ged, in all his flawed and relatable anger and fear, was not the Wizard of Earthsea that I had assumed him to be. The real wizard of Earthsea could not actually be found within the story, and yet was present on every page, because the author was the wizard. Ursula K. Le Guin was the wizard.

I realized then that not a single word in that passage could be changed without breaking the spell she had cast over me. I knew the shadow could be nothing else but a clot, or it would be something entirely different than what it was. I knew with certainty that Le Guin had chosen every word with intent and with care. I sensed a kind of exhilarating power in that, and freedom, as though someone had just placed a wand in my hand.

I realized then that I wanted to be a writer, and now, nearly thirty years later, that moment with Le Guin has shaped the writer that I am more than any other experience or influence, and she has continued to teach me during these nearly-thirty years. I learned from every book of hers that I read, whether science fiction, fantasy, contemporary realism, or her essays and nonfiction. The lessons were not only related to the craft of writing, but also to the living of life. In her work I have always found wisdom, and truth, and grace.

When I wrote to her seven years ago and sent her a copy of my first novel, I didn’t express enough of that. I felt insecure, and I didn’t want to bother her. But I did tell her that I was a writer because of her, and a couple of weeks later, much to my surprise, she wrote me back.

My hands trembled a bit as I opened the envelope, and I cried as I read the note in which she complimented and encouraged me with enthusiasm and sincerity. She spoke not to the me who had just sold his first novel, but directly to the twelve-year-old inside me who had a dream, and it’s hard to describe that kind of validation. Then, when she graciously offered a quote for the cover of my second novel, I felt that I had come to the completion or fulfillment of something profound, which of course means the beginning of something else.

A few years ago, I encountered another Le Guin quote:

“Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul…’  A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

If my work as a writer were to ever have a mission statement, that would be it. Richard Peck has said that as authors, we write by the light of every book we have ever read, and in the constellation of my literary inspirations and heroes, Le Guin shines brightest. She may have passed away today, but her light has not gone out, and her magic has not faded. Her spells and enchantments remain, full of truth.