Every writing teacher says it. Every craft book repeats it. "Write what you know." It's meant to be liberating — an invitation to draw on lived experience rather than inventing from nothing. But for African writers, it has historically come bundled with a silent addendum that nobody says out loud: "Write what you know — and then explain it to us."
The Invisible Translator
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from writing across a perceived cultural distance. It is the exhaustion of the invisible translator: the writer who has to describe the smell of suya not because the reader hasn't smelled it, but because the imagined reader hasn't. Who has to footnote the significance of a naming ceremony not because African readers need the footnote, but because the gatekeeper — the agent, the editor, the prize committee — might.
"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This isn't a new observation. Adichie named it eloquently in her TED talk. But what's less discussed is how this pressure shapes the advice itself. "Write what you know" becomes, for African writers, "write what you know — but make sure we know it too." The result is fiction filtered through a lens that was never yours to begin with.
What Writing From the Inside Out Actually Means
Writing from the inside out means refusing the invisible translator. It means trusting that your reader can catch up. It means letting your grandmother call a thing by its real name without italicising it. It means letting the market in Lagos be loud and specific and particular, not "a bustling African market."
It means writing the way you think when nobody is watching — not the way you think you should write for an audience that you've decided, probably incorrectly, can't keep up.
The Practical Question
So how do you actually do it? A few things that help:
Write the first draft for one person. Not the market, not the prize committee, not the imagined Western reader. Write it for someone you know — your cousin in Lagos, your aunty in Accra, your classmate who grew up in the same neighbourhood. Write for someone who doesn't need the footnotes. You can always add clarity in revision. You cannot add authenticity later.
Name things specifically. Not "a stew" — egusi. Not "traditional music" — fuji, or afrobeats, or makossa. Specificity is not alienating. Generality is. The specific detail is what makes a story feel real, and real is universal.
Trust the reader. Every story asks its reader to learn something. Readers who pick up Tolstoy learn what a samovar is. Readers who pick up García Márquez learn what aguardiente means. Your reader can learn what puff-puff is. They will be glad they did.
The Mirroring Our World Approach
At Mirroring Our World, every workshop begins from this premise: your story, told in your own voice, for your own people, is already sufficient. It doesn't need to be translated. It doesn't need to be explained. It needs to be written — with craft, with care, with specificity — and then it needs to be trusted.
That's what "write what you know" actually means. Write the thing you know so well you don't even think about it. That's where the best stories live.