evidence: Although Hemingway’s achievement is certainly enviable, the desire to equal his literary greatness turns out to be a Faustian bargain: his genius could only be attained through a life of suffering. On more than one occasion he was asked to author a book on his approach to writing. Not surprisingly, he never agreed to write it."There is nothing to writing," he said."All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Hemingway understood that good writing was not the product of a masterful technique. Instead, good writing is the expression of meaningful experiences. For Hemingway, these were experiences of pain expressed in the blunt language of reality. The cost of achieving such glory was the subjection of his soul to a lifetime of torture. Had his life been happy, his great writings would have never even been imagined. [...] So to my friend I must apologize: I should have told you the importance of not being Ernest. Whenever you have the choice, you ought to opt for happiness. A life nailed to Hemingway’s cross of self-loathing – however legendary – will simply bleed out.