It’s a cliché, a thing writers supposedly say, or learn to say, to themselves. The imperative also implies the existence of, and need for, an editor. While assembling Issue 2 — and honing the magazine’s voice and the voices in it — we found ourselves gravitating toward tales of editing. As Francesco Pacifico notes in this issue’s essay « How Americans edit sex out of my writing »: « The editing process might be the real literature. » 

So we gathered some darlings from contributors.