Yes, writing is a superpower.
It’s magic. It’s science. It’s art and sleight-of-hand.
For storytellers, songwriters, and advertisers, writing is emotional engineering—the ability to make people feel what you want them to feel. To make them laugh. Or love. Or often in the case of news media…to make them hate.
For academics, scientists, and journalists, writing is informational engineering—the ability to make people know what you want them to know. (A perilous responsibility if ever there was one.) It can illuminate people’s minds, or obscure them. Every single word is a promise that truth exists—one others can grasp if we express it clearly.
And you have this superpower…don’t you?
You know how to write, yes?
You passed your English classes. You have a bachelor’s degree. You message your friends all day long. Occasionally you even make them laugh.
So, why does staring at a blank page feel like pulling teeth? Why did you not get an A+ on every essay you ever wrote in school? Why did drafting your college personal statements feel like pulling teeth with rusty pliers?
You can recite grammar rules. You spell things correctly. You learned five-paragraph essay structure and you might have published a research paper or two. And yet…even now, why do you feel the urge to use to AI to “clean up” things you’ve written?
Why are you writing “dirty” sentences in the first place?!
The Hard Truth: No One Ever Taught You How to Write
Really and truly: no one taught you.
This isn’t your fault. No one taught me either. It’s a systematic failure of education almost everywhere on the planet since World War II.
In sixteen years of formal education, you followed endless instructions. You copied and pasted—intellectually, conceptually—and teachers gave you As for following the rules. But they never made you understand. (Did they even understand themselves?)
Other things were more important. Coding. Internships. SATs. Who had time to teach you the psychological process of making people feel and know things? (What were you in a school for wizards? Or comedians?)
Perhaps, if you were lucky, a sad-eyed English teacher promised you that words can be weapons, or medicine, or beauty, or even candy. And she might have taught you to appreciate them. But she never taught you how to wield them for yourself.
How to exert utter mastery over them.
How to manipulate them like a waterbender.
But here’s an awesome and absolute truth:
You can learn to wield words like magic.
It’s not too late. As long you speak a language—any language—you can make people feel what you want them to feel, and know what you want them to know.
Whatever you want to write in the future—science communication, speeches, newspaper op-eds, research articles, cover letters, or a witty Substack—you can become brilliant at it. You can become someone people point at and whisper: “…amazing writer.”
And honestly?
It only takes a few weeks.
The Book That Changes Everything
When I first encountered my late friend, John Maguire, I thought I was already a pretty good writer. I was, after all, a poet, novelist, and literary translator; my fiction had been anthologized by multiple universities; I’d won academic writing awards on two continents; AND I’d spent a decade teaching high school and college writing.
But when I discovered John’s obscure little tome, Readable Writing, I was…astonished.
I think this is my…fourth…personal copy?
Have you ever heard of the “Mary’s Room“ thought experiment? It’s about a girl who lives in a black and white room, only reads black and white books, and only watches screens that display black and white. Then…Mary is shown the color red.
That’s what John’s book did for me.
It showed me the color red.
It explained something so simple I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it anywhere, in any book, in any class—a cognitive architecture of effective writing. I was even more astonished that I’d never figured this out for myself. A child could learn it in just a few classes, but it was so elegant you could see it applied in Shakespeare’s sonnets. And as I worked through the exercises (yes, I worked through every lesson), I realized that my brain had irrevocably changed.
I saw bad writing everywhere. I couldn’t unsee it.
But at the same time…I knew how to fix that writing.
Later, I taught the same lessons to high-school students, and they too learned to detect bad writing (immediately) and how to fix it (immediately). Many of them were writing in a second language, but all soon became “gifted” writers…and I became a loud and proud evangelist for John’s book.
Over the years, John and I became great friends. I learned that he’d been a Pulitzer-nominated journalist, that he was something of a mad scientist, and that in Boston-area colleges his zany writing lessons were both infamous and beloved. He helped me refine my own teaching. And, sadly, when he passed away two years ago, I made it my personal mission to make sure that more people learn about his mighty, mighty book.
I believe it’s a work of actual genius.
I believe it offers a legitimate revolution for writing pedagogy.
But, more importantly, I believe it contains a bold promise for you: if you complete the exercises in this book, writing will become your permanent superpower. It will be cognitively impossible for you to produce bad writing ever again. (Unless, of course, you choose to produce bad writing. Either way you’ll be in control.)
This isn’t hyperbole. Readable Writing will fundamentally rewire how you think about language.
Don’t believe me?
Let me give you a taste.
The First Principles of Writing
Read these two passages then ask yourself: “Which is easier to understand? Which stays in my mind after I read it?”
Example 1:
“Nena Daconte was almost a child, with the eyes of a happy bird, and molasses skin still radiant with the bright Caribbean sun in the mournful January gloom, and she was wrapped up to her chin in a mink coat that could not have been bought with the year’s wages of the entire frontier garrison. Her husband, Billy Sánchez De Ávila, who drove the car, was a year younger and almost as beautiful, and he wore a plaid jacket and a baseball hat. Unlike his wife, he was tall and athletic and had the iron jaw of a timid thug.”
Example 2:
“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the reiteration of power.”
The first comes from Gabriel García Márquez’s short story, “The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow.” The second comes from Prof. Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble,” an article that shot to infamy after winning a Bad Writing Contest.
Butler’s sentence is indeed horrific. But…do you know why it’s horrific? Can you articulate to me—immediately—what’s wrong with the whole thing?
I can, but only because I’ve read Readable Writing.
Most bad writing, like Butler’s—and like most SOPs submitted for grad admissions—suffers from the same creeping, swampy, nasty, pestilential disease: too much abstraction.
All human language exists on a spectrum between concrete (specific, sensory, vivid, tangible) to abstract (general, conceptual, invisible). A “red barn” is concrete. “Agricultural infrastructure” is abstract.
The more concrete a piece of writing is, the easier it is for the reader to grasp, enjoy, and mentally process. Concrete language stays in the mind. It’s very “sticky.”
Abstract language, however, leaves almost no impact on the human mind. It’s tasteless, soundless, and emotionless. It requires effort to reason out. And it disappears quickly, like smoke.
(See! Smoke sings in your mind because it’s concrete!)
In fact, we might say that metaphor and simile (which I hope you learned about in high school) only exist because of our intrinsic need to make abstract ideas concrete so we can better understand them.
But even my explanation here is abstract, so let’s make it concrete, and thus, make it immediately understandable in your mind.
Two Sentences
“I have significant real-world experience in environmental science.”
“I spent three months in a Bengaluru slum measuring arsenic levels in drinking water.”
Which is concrete? Which is abstract?
You know this already.
One conveys real information. It makes you feel something. It sticks in your mind. The other is nothing more than CV word salad that conveys no actual information at all.
(Word salad! An excellent concrete-ified metaphor!)
Now, go back and re-read Judith Butler’s nightmarish academic jargon and tell me what’s wrong with it. I’ll wait.
(Tapping my foot. Checking my watch.)
Yes! It’s 100% abstraction. There’s not a single word in the entire sentence that you can grasp, see, taste, smell, or hear. Because of this, it’s incredibly difficult to understand. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just really and unnecessarily vague.
(Pro Tip: Extreme vagueness is almost always a crutch used to hide mistakes, lack of understanding, or lies).
Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying ALL abstraction is bad, just that you have to have balance. If you reread that passage from García Márquez, you’ll notice this effect. The “mournful January gloom” (abstract) is more powerful because the character is “wrapped up to her chin in a mink coat” (concrete).
Good writing is knowing how to balance these competing elements. But, before you can achieve that balance, you have to possess the ability to recognize concreteness and abstraction in your writing, and then know how to nudge it in the direction you want it to go.
This is the first principle you learn in Readable Writing, and the first thing you put into practice. This is your first step toward a superpower.
And of course, there are many other abilities you’ll acquire, like:
- How to use active verbs to make readers feel energy
- How “people words” magnetize readers’ attention
- How to surgically remove dead weight words (very useful for meeting word limits)
- And how to use the “Ladder of Abstraction” to discuss highly complex topics in a way that’s a pleasure to read
When you master these principles in your writing, readers can see what you’re saying. And when they see it (as if with their own eyes), they unconsciously convince themselves that what you’re saying is true.
But does this apply to academic-type writing?
Absolutely! This is precisely why the sample SOPs you’ve seen on this blog were so powerful and successful. Whether with Canadian blueberry farms, slums in Delhi, scorching Nigerian sunlight, the glinting lights of an art installation, a chimpanzee sanctuary, or even just the names of labs where you’ve worked, authentic details in your writing make you come alive on the page.
Likewise, it’s why Columbia Professor and Psychologist, Adam Mastroianni, writes so much about writing on his absolutely brilliant Experimental History Substack:
“Good writing requires the consideration of other minds—after all, words only mean something when another mind decodes them…”
Trust me: this is no gimmick.
It’s a first principle of the written word, it’s one you can master in just a few lessons, and it’s something that will permanently rewire your brain.
Why This Book Will Transform Your Writing (And Your Forehead) Forever
Maguire’s book doesn’t just explain these concepts to you. Through a systematic progression of exercises, you develop a kind of X-ray vision for bad writing—your own and that of others. Eventually this feeling becomes automatic, even unconscious.
Of course, a lot of talented writers develop this intuition on their own through a lifetime of reading, writing, and masochistic revising. George Saunders, the world-conquering novelist and Syracuse University professor, describes it this way:
“My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and “N” on this side (“Negative”). I try to read what I’ve written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might… Where’s the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the “P” zone.”
Readable Writing gives you that nifty needle-meter. It’ll take some practice and effort, and yours will likely never be as beautifully precise as George Saunders’s, but you’ll have it. It’ll be right there on your forehead, forever.
What Makes Readable Writing Different From Other Writing Guides
If you’ve read enough on this blog, you may have seen me make juvenile jokes about “classic” writing books like the famous (and in my opinion, utterly useless) Strunk and White.
Readable Writing is categorically different. It doesn’t ask you to memorize rules, but to work through sequential exercises until you rewire your perception.
In fact, the problem with most writing advice—ironically and hilariously enough—is that it’s abstract. Show, don’t tell! Be specific! Use active voice! Maguire’s book, however, is wholly concrete. Without even naming these rules at all, it shows you why they work at a cognitive level, and therein teaches you what might be the greatest writing superpower of all: to think like a reader, and not like a writer.
The exercises are surgical. Each one removes a specific bad habit, and trust me, we all have bad habits. I never even realized how often I overuse dead-verbs like “to have” and “to get” and “to be” until I read Maguire’s book. That lesson alone permanently changed my writing for the better (and the lessons I teach here at WriteIvy).
Why This Book Is So Incredibly Worth It
At $45 for the physical book, and $40 for the digital version, Readable Writing is a lot cheaper than most textbooks. And of course, if you want a writing education from a fancy university, you can get one for a tidy $6,000.
But considering that the book gives you an entire semester’s worth of instruction (about 20 hours to complete), and a lifetime skill that compounds forever, I consider it an absolute steal.
Actually, no, it’s better than a steal. I don’t even like making comparisons to other books or writing methods, because in my experience there are no comparisons. I’ve never seen anything else that works like Readable Writing does. It’s just the best. There’s nothing else.
From One Writer to Another: My Challenge to You
Get the book. Do one lesson per day.
The building-block lessons in the beginning will each take 20-30 minutes. These are the lessons that have the biggest impact—the exercises that, in my opinion, truly rewire your perception.
Unit 1 has only 12 lessons—After this unit (it’ll take about two weeks), you’ll have acquired a wild new mastery of sentence-level prose. You’ll see language in a way you never have before. You’ll be on your way to wielding words like a waterbender.
Unit 2 has only 4 lessons—These lessons take a bit more time, but at this point, you’ll never feel unconfident writing essays or articles of any kind, ever again. Writing full, perfect, submittable essays won’t always be “easy,” but you will always be in control.
The transformation isn’t instantaneous. You still have to put in the work. You have do the exercises. But if you do, the change in your mind is permanent. In one month, your writing will be exponentially better than it’s ever been in your life. In two, you’ll be like me—wondering how it’s possible that this isn’t taught in every school everywhere in the world.
In a year?
You’ll still be a scientist, an engineer, a diplomat, a designer, a health counselor, a researcher, or whatever else you want to be, but now you’ll have an official new title.
You’ll be a “writer.”
And you’ll be able to wield your new powers however and whenever you like.
Conclusion: The Superpower That Was Yours All Along
Ultimately, you DO know how to write. The building blocks were always there. You have language within you, and it’s powerful. You were just never taught to see that language for what it is—something you can mold and massage and play with until it’s exactly what you want it to be.
Until readers feel what you want them to feel.
Until they know what you want them to know.
Readable Writing makes this possible. Short of becoming a total nerd (like me) who writes for hours every day, for years, figuring all this out on their own, I don’t know of any other method to turn the language within you into an actual, executable, engineerable skill, and then turn it into an automatic instinct.
If I sound hyperbolic in this recommendation, it’s on purpose. I’m an evangelist for my late friend’s book. I’ve recommended it to students for years. I’ve gifted it to students for years.
Now, I hope you’ll give it a shot. Your grad school SOP was just the beginning. Learn to write in the “readable” style, and you’ll have an advantage in every professional environment for the rest of your life.
Your thinking will change. Your language will change. And you’ll never feel unconfident with writing ever again. If that’s not a superpower, I don’t know what is.
