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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Dillard do one night in the rare book room of the Virginia library?
(a) Left the lights on all night.
(b) Moved a black chess piece.
(c) Moved a white chess piece.
(d) Knocked over a chess board.

2. What do television and films do to the body's senses, according to Dillard?
(a) Make connections.
(b) They make the writer sense the need to write.
(c) Numb them.
(d) Stimulate them.

3. As explained by Dillard in Chapter 1, what must be done to a piece of writing after the first draft is finished?
(a) It must be mercilessly edited.
(b) Nothing; it is done.
(c) Delete just a few sentences.
(d) You must strike it with a hammer.

4. What does Dillard describe as 'a net for catching days' in Chapter 2?
(a) Clocks.
(b) Dreams.
(c) A journal.
(d) A schedule.

5. Which author would only write poetry when he was '...rather out of health'?
(a) Osip Mandelstam.
(b) Wallace Stevens.
(c) A.E. Housman.
(d) Jack London.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which religious sect did Dillard read about in the Virginia library?

2. What does Dillard's "line of words" do with random pictures in the writer's mind?

3. Jack London maintained that every writer needs a technique, experience, and what else?

4. In Dillard's thoughts, what words stopped Rebbe Shmelke from hearing his teacher?

5. What does Dillard say that she makes a pen drawing of in Chapter 2?

(see the answer key)

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