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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3, Publication and Survival.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What author responded to the question of why she wrote fiction, "Because I'm good at it"?
(a) Edith Wharton.
(b) Sylvia Plath.
(c) Joyce Carol Oates.
(d) Flannery O'Connor.

2. To whose poetry and prose had Gardner made allusions to in the novel Grendel?
(a) William Blake.
(b) Percy Shelley.
(c) Lord Byron.
(d) Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

3. What does Gardner claim is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven?
(a) A psychological wound.
(b) A tendency to prove himself.
(c) A need for love.
(d) A tendency to drink.

4. What is the name of the writer's conference where Gardner has frequently worked with writing assistants?
(a) Silver Mountain.
(b) Bread Loaf.
(c) Last Dinner.
(d) Peabody.

5. Letters to publishing houses should ideally be addressed to whom?
(a) A particular editor.
(b) The head editor.
(c) The assistant editor.
(d) Any editor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What name does Gardner assign to the teenage daughter whose unknown father moves next door in Chapter 1?

2. Gardner states in Chapter 3 that for a young novelist, an agent is all but what?

3. Where did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California from?

4. In Chapter 2, Gardner states, "A writer does not become better by being ____."

5. Which writing teacher and author is famous for the energy and relative success with which he pushes his students' work at appropriate editors?

(see the answer key)

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