In 1922, Hemingway was in Switzerland when he met an editor who liked Hemingway's writing and wanted to see more.
Hemingway wired a note to his wife in Paris, asking her to bring his writing samples with her to Switzerland.
She packed up everything into a suitcase, and I do mean everything.Originals, carbon copies (remember those?), handwritten samples,everything she could find.
But then the suitcase was stolen at the train station.
All of his work... Gone.
He then proceeded to write some of his best work ever.
As he later said, “The first and most important thing of all, for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.” 
By starting over from scratch, the ramblings and the juvenilia were stripped away, leaving only the gold behind.
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