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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 did a well-known writer respond to a student in Chapter 5 who asked if he could be a writer?
(a) Do you like sentences?
(b) Do you have imagination?
(c) What do you know about the world?
(d) Have you taken my course?

2. What did Dillard notice most in the Washington cabin she wrote in?
(a) The view.
(b) The cold.
(c) The beauty.
(d) The quiet.

3. What does Dillard say that she thinks happens to something, such as a writing idea, that you do not give up freely and abundantly?
(a) It will be poorly written.
(b) It becomes better with age.
(c) Someone else will get it.
(d) It becomes lost to you.

4. How long does the twilight linger on the island on Haro Strait in June and July?
(a) Until nine at night.
(b) Until seven p.m.
(c) Until nearly midnight.
(d) Until dawn.

5. What damage did the Smith-Corona typewriter do in Chapter 4?
(a) The table the typewriter was on collapsed.
(b) The curtains were set on fire.
(c) The writer's shirt was burned.
(d) The rug got damaged.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who wrote, 'He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail; knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life'?

2. When Dillard lacked sufficient energy for writing one morning in Chapter 3, what does she say she did to try and get it?

3. When Dillard left her cabin for home in Chapter 5 during a northeaster, how was she feeling, walking down the beach?

4. What was Dillard's painter neighbor, Glenn, working on for six months in Chapter 6?

5. Who once said that '..his firewood warmed him twice because he labored to cut his own'?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. When Dillard mentions that Thoreau's firewood warmed him twice because he labored to cut his own wood, why does she say that her wood froze her twice?

3. 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?

4. What is ludicrous about the tea kettle in the faculty lounge of the university that Dillard wrote in?

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

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

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

8. 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?

9. Why does Dillard say it makes more sense to write one big book than to write many stories or essays?

10. How does a work in progress turn on its author, according to Dillard?

(see the answer keys)

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