View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Dillard say that she defines the life of the writer in Chapter 3?
(a) As colorless.
(b) As sensory.
(c) As literary.
(d) As ludicrous.

2. Referring to a new idea, who said, 'Cheep--and all at once there it is'?
(a) Stevens.
(b) Boehme.
(c) Wilder.
(d) Einstein.

3. What did Dillard use to crank herself up to write, in the log cabin in Chapter 3?
(a) The company of a cat and dog.
(b) Coffee in titrated doses.
(c) A daily jog on the beach.
(d) Photos of lions.

4. How did Dillard come to understand the proper way to split wood?
(a) She watched an instructional video.
(b) By sheer luck.
(c) The neighbors told her.
(d) Via a dream.

5. Where did Dillard forget about a boiling teakettle and burn it?
(a) A faculty lounge in a university.
(b) An office in a college.
(c) A cabin on Puget Sound.
(d) Her kitchen.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does it make more sense to write one big book rather than a collection of stories or essays, in Dillard's opinion?

2. What did Dillard notice most in the Washington cabin she wrote in?

3. Thornton Wilder cited an unnamed writer of sonnets as saying only one line drops from where?

4. What is the topic of an essay written by Dillard that she said she considers too obscure and too intellectual?

5. What, according to Dillard, is the first thing a writer does that is similar to what a painter does?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Dillard say that the life of the mind of a writer is hard to be called "living"?

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

3. 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?

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

5. 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?

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

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

8. What did the children who visited Dillard in Chapter 3 surprise her with?

9. What did Dillard learn from the local ferryman?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,053 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample