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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. How long did it take William Faulkner to write "As I Lay Dying"?
(a) Ten years.
(b) Six years.
(c) Six weeks.
(d) Six months.

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

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

4. What does Dillard's "line of words" do with random pictures in the writer's mind?
(a) Dismisses them.
(b) Dreams of them.
(c) Dissects them out.
(d) Writes them down, word for word.

5. What does Dillard compare writing to in the first paragraph of the book?
(a) Laying out a line of words.
(b) A path to pick through.
(c) A dead end.
(d) An ordeal to be probed.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who once said, "Which is the work in which he hasn't surrendered, under dire difficulty, the best thing he meant to have kept"?

2. What had Dillard forgotten all about as she worked on a Fourth-of-July night?

3. When a writer is stuck while writing a book, what does Dillard think he should do?

4. What animal, according to Dillard, is an analogy for characters in a writer's book "taking over"?

5. What did Wallace Stevens dictate to his secretary?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Dillard describe the line of words as being one's own heart?

2. 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?

3. Describe the inside of Dillard's study on Cape Cod.

4. When Dillard heard a June bug bumping up against the carrel window one night, what did the noise bring her to realize?

5. How does Dillard describe the way in which a writer might start the process of writing a book?

6. What analogy does Dillard use to explain how a book leads its writer on?

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

8. When Dillard was working in the library at night, how did she find her way around in the dark?

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

10. Dillard describes the scenes from her desk at the library in Virginia. Why does she say these scenes are detrimental to her work?

(see the answer keys)

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