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

3. With what type of aid did Dillard once work in order to keep a project organized?

4. What two problems does Dillard say she feels that a writer must solve when writing a book?

5. Referring to a new idea, who said, 'Cheep--and all at once there it is'?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. Why did the island on Haro Strait haunt 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. 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. How does Dillard say that she learned the correct way to split wood on the chopping block?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What advice did Dillard give to a reader asking if she would teach him to write? Describe the two different ways in which Dillard explains her advice.

Essay Topic 2

Why did a young photographer in Chapter 1 submit the same landscape every year for judgment to the same person, only to be rejected every year? What was the photographer's ultimate goal in his recurring submission? What does having worked long and hard on a particular project lead a creator to believe?

Essay Topic 3

What is meant by Thoreau's statement to "know your own bone"? How is this advice helpful to a writer?

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