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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What sport did Dillard play with a boys' music camp?
(a) Flag Football.
(b) Basketball.
(c) Soccer.
(d) Softball.

2. Which religious sect did Dillard read about in the Virginia library?
(a) Hinduism.
(b) Islam.
(c) Catholicism.
(d) Hasidism.

3. Who once said, "Which is the work in which he hasn't surrendered, under dire difficulty, the best thing he meant to have kept"?
(a) Annie Dillard.
(b) William Faulkner.
(c) Henry James.
(d) William Shakespeare.

4. When Dillard relays a story about a cabdriver singing a boring song, why did the driver sing it twice?
(a) It was a throw-away song.
(b) He was stalling for time.
(c) He wanted to bore the author.
(d) It had taken him a long time to get it right.

5. What was knocking on the carrel window as Dillard worked in Roanoke?
(a) A bat.
(b) A June bug.
(c) Rain.
(d) Mosquitos.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who claimed to have written for twenty hours a day?

2. What did Dillard find herself doing in the rare book room nearly every day for about two weeks?

3. As explained by Dillard in Chapter 1, what must be done to a piece of writing after the first draft is finished?

4. How long did it take William Faulkner to write "As I Lay Dying"?

5. According to Dillard, what kind of life is a life of sensation?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Dillard say that she made a pen drawing of the scenes outside her library window?

2. What decision did Dillard make to finally shut herself off from all distractions at the library carrel?

3. How does Dillard say that she defines the meaning of schedules, in Chapter 2?

4. When the cab driver in New York sang songs with Dillard, why did he sing one dull song twice?

5. What, outside Dillard's library window, proved to cause the most distraction to her work?

6. Why does Dillard believe that putting together a book is interesting and exhilarating?

7. Why does Dillard believe a writer often wants to refrain from throwing away the beginnings of the work she has created?

8. When Dillard glanced in the daylight at one of the stacks of books she regularly touched to feel her way at night, what surprised her?

9. Dillard vows to remember her difficulties writing in Roanoke, Virginia. Why is this ironic?

10. What is the meaning of Thoreau's note that "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them"?

(see the answer keys)

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