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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What do television and films do to the body's senses, according to Dillard?
(a) Numb them.
(b) They make the writer sense the need to write.
(c) Make connections.
(d) Stimulate them.

2. What did Dillard do one night in the rare book room of the Virginia library?
(a) Moved a white chess piece.
(b) Knocked over a chess board.
(c) Left the lights on all night.
(d) Moved a black chess piece.

3. How many hours of sleep would Jack London usually get?
(a) Four.
(b) Two.
(c) Seven.
(d) Eight.

4. What did Wallace Stevens dictate to his secretary?
(a) Poetry.
(b) Orders for lunch.
(c) Letters.
(d) Editorial essays.

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

6. Whose wife posed for the Liberty dime?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) Wilhelm Dinesen.
(c) Wallace Stevens.
(d) Osip Mandelstam.

7. In an analogy about a photographer, why did the photographer say he brought the same rejected photograph for judgment every year?
(a) "...I only used that camera this one time."
(b) "...I never throw anything away."
(c) "...I had to climb a mountain to get it."
(d) "...I just know it is my best shot."

8. Dillard refers to writing as changing "..from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool." What does epistemological mean?
(a) Bacterial DNA that is extrachromosomal.
(b) Greek knowledge.
(c) A philosophy concerned with the nature and origin of knowledge.
(d) Surgical incision of the perineum during childbirth.

9. How long does it generally take to write a book?
(a) Six months.
(b) One to ten months.
(c) Two to ten years.
(d) One to five years.

10. Dillard believes that some writers weaken their resolve to discard parts of their work. Why?
(a) The words have come to have a necessary quality.
(b) It is too much work.
(c) People have told them it is too good to discard.
(d) They believe every word they write is too important to discard.

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

12. What does Dillard say shocked her as she remembered a formal lunch with a publishing colleague in Chapter 2?
(a) Her lack of entertaining people.
(b) Her plants dying.
(c) The fanaticism of her twenties.
(d) The sexist terms the man used.

13. What did Dillard find herself doing in the rare book room nearly every day for about two weeks?
(a) Playing chess with an unknown opponent.
(b) Writing notes to a chess player.
(c) Looking for rare books on chess.
(d) Spying on the head librarian.

14. As explained by Dillard in Chapter 1, what must be done to a piece of writing after the first draft is finished?
(a) Delete just a few sentences.
(b) Nothing; it is done.
(c) It must be mercilessly edited.
(d) You must strike it with a hammer.

15. What does Dillard say that she feels a writer must do about feeling one's work in progress is either magnificent or abominable?
(a) Get the work critiqued.
(b) Ask for help from readers.
(c) Ignore it and not indulge in the feeling.
(d) Celebrate or cry.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who did Dillard see standing at the chess table in the Roanoke library one night?

2. Finish this West African proverb from Chapter 2: "The beginning of wisdom is.."

3. What does Dillard have to say about appealing workplaces for writing?

4. When Dillard wrote in Roanoke, Virginia, what did she long for upon coming home after writing?

5. What happened in Bridgeport, Connecticut one morning in April, 1987?

(see the answer keys)

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