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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 does Dillard say she believes poets and novelists like?
(a) Writers from the nineteenth century.
(b) Poems and novels.
(c) The thought of themselves as writers.
(d) Books about writing.

2. What does Dillard say that she thinks an artist supposes a live image to possess?
(a) Something he should pretend to know.
(b) A secret to be discovered.
(c) A confused set of lines.
(d) Some technique stolen from him.

3. What does the impulse to save something good for a better place later signify, according to Dillard?
(a) It should be used now.
(b) It should be used later.
(c) It should be forgotten.
(d) It should be hoarded.

4. Why did Dillard write that 'People should not feed moralistic animals'?
(a) Her cat pushed its empty food bowl around.
(b) Her dog trotted around the room, head up in the air.
(c) Her dog looked at her and rolled its eyes.
(d) Her cat stretched out and turned its back to her.

5. What written advice was found that Michelangelo had left for his apprentice?
(a) Draw, Antonio..and do not waste time.
(b) Paint, Antonio...and get it done now.
(c) Use your ideas immediately, Antonio.
(d) Antonio, do as I have done.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whose drawings and paintings did Dillard believe show his bewilderment and persistence?

2. How did Dillard come to understand the proper way to split wood?

3. What was the result of Dillard's first attempts at splitting wood in Chapter 3?

4. What did Frederick Buechner note about an author realizing that he is actually writing?

5. What did Dillard do when she was upstairs in a house and she felt a tremor under her feet in Chapter 4?

Short Essay Questions

1. The next-to-last sentence of Chapter 5 reads, 'Shall we go rowing again, we who believe we may indeed row off the edge and fall?' What does this refer to?

2. How does Dillard compare a writer to a Seminole alligator wrestler?

3. Why was a moth trying to gain altitude and ultimately drowning, in Chapter 3?

4. What does Dillard mean in Chapter 5 by 'Probe and search each object in a piece of art'?

5. How does Dillard say that she believes a writer must control his or her own energies in order to work?

6. What did writers such as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ralph Ellison, and Eudora Welty have in common when learning to write, according to Dillard?

7. In Chapter 4, Dillard's typewriter erupted. What was the damage done?

8. Why did the island on Haro Strait haunt Dillard?

9. Why does Dillard say that she needed more materials than a pencil and paper in order to write something like a second draft for a thirty-page chapter?

10. In Chapter 5, how does Dillard compare a writer to a tennis player?

(see the answer keys)

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