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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What do experienced writers urge young men and women to learn, according to Chapter 1?
(a) How to spell.
(b) Shakesperian plays.
(c) A useful trade.
(d) Word definitions.

2. What was Dillard's only physical activity in the one-room log cabin on an empty beach?
(a) Walking a few feet from the bed to the desk.
(b) Jogging to her husband's cabin in the evening.
(c) Walking along the beach at low tide.
(d) Practicing yoga on the beach.

3. How do Tibetan lamas keep from floating away, as described in Chapter 5?
(a) They swim with the current.
(b) They walk very slowly.
(c) They wear chains.
(d) The meditate towards the destination.

4. When Dillard once wrote in a cinder-block cell, what scene did it overlook?
(a) Mountains.
(b) A strip mall.
(c) A tar-and-gravel roof.
(d) Cape Cod bay.

5. Who is the Danish aristocrat mentioned in Chapter 2?
(a) Wilhelm Dinesen.
(b) Sverre Magnus.
(c) Wallace Stevens.
(d) Osip Mandelstam.

Short Answer Questions

1. At the island on Haro Strait, why would a man overboard die within ten minutes?

2. Where does the "line of words" go at the end of Chapter 1?

3. What does the novel as a form usually represent, according to Dillard?

4. How did Dillard's sentence ('He led him into the water') from the book she was working on during a northeaster sound to her?

5. How did Washington writer, Charlie Butts, write fiction in order to gain momentum?

(see the answer key)

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