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

2. What does Dillard say that she believes a writer should aim for when writing?
(a) The scraps of wood.
(b) The chopping block.
(c) The axe.
(d) The wood.

3. What is the finished work's relationship to the vision of it, as viewed by Dillard?
(a) Something unchanging compared to something temporal.
(b) Something new compared to an antique.
(c) A final draft compared to a second draft.
(d) Well-known passages compared to the vision filled in.

4. Where, in Washington State, did Dillard beg a cabin in which to write?
(a) Boundary Pass.
(b) On Herron Island.
(c) On Haro Strait.
(d) On Snake River.

5. When Dillard lacked sufficient energy for writing one morning in Chapter 3, what does she say she did to try and get it?
(a) Split some wood and smoked.
(b) Played the recorder.
(c) Smoked and drank coffee.
(d) Ran a few miles and ate.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Dillard say she believes poets and novelists like?

2. How did a well-known writer respond to a student in Chapter 5 who asked if he could be a writer?

3. Who or what will teach someone to write, according to Dillard in Chapter 3?

4. What is a writer compared to in Chapter 5?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

5. Why does Dillard compare a writer writing a first draft to a Zulu warrior and an Aztec maiden?

6. What was Glenn's story about Ferrar Burn?

7. Why does Dillard advise writers not to hoard a good idea for a later place in a book being written or for another book?

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

9. 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?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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