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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

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

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

3. In working-class France, what did Dillard say that experienced workers tell an apprentice who gets hurt or tired?

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

5. What does Dillard say that she thinks an artist supposes a live image to possess?

Short Essay Questions

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

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. What was unfortunate about Dillard learning how to split wood correctly?

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

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 5, how does Dillard compare a writer to a tennis player?

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

9. Who was Paul Glenn?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which of the metaphors in Chapter 1 likens Dillard to an explorer searching out new realms without really understanding the meaning of it all as yet? Does this metaphor work? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

In Chapter 6, Dillard explains the haunting aspects of the island on Haro Strait. What haunted Dillard about the island? What is it about these aspects of the island that can be related to the writing life in general?

Essay Topic 3

How is the sensation of writing an unmerited grace, a new idea likened to a chicken laying an egg, as Einstein is to have said? If the gift of writing is handed to you if you look for it, how does Dillard believe you find it?

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