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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. When Dillard relays a story about a cabdriver singing a boring song, why did the driver sing it twice?
(a) He was stalling for time.
(b) It was a throw-away song.
(c) It had taken him a long time to get it right.
(d) He wanted to bore the author.

3. What does Dillard have to say about appealing workplaces for writing?
(a) Avoid drabness at all costs.
(b) They are to be avoided.
(c) The lovelier the scenery, the better.
(d) Bright yellow paint on the walls is best.

4. What animal, according to Dillard, is an analogy for characters in a writer's book "taking over"?
(a) A shark.
(b) The caterpillar.
(c) The lion.
(d) The sea star.

5. What question does Dillard say a writer must ask when considering random scenes that come to mind?
(a) Do I want to expose these scenes to the light?
(b) How many scenes do I need to write?
(c) Is writing the same as film exposure?
(d) Should I write everything I think of?

6. What did an inchworm search for in a panic in Chapter 1?
(a) A caterpillar.
(b) Its front legs.
(c) The next part of a blade of grass it was climbing.
(d) A way in which to lift its hind legs to its front legs.

7. What does Dillard say that the printed word cannot compete with?
(a) Travel.
(b) People.
(c) Music.
(d) The movies.

8. Which author would walk through the hills for seven or eight hours on end without a hint of fatigue?
(a) Stevens.
(b) Emerson.
(c) Nietzsche.
(d) Dante.

9. Oftentimes, what part of Dillard's work must be edited out?
(a) The typos and misspellings.
(b) The best-written part.
(c) The dialogue.
(d) The opening paragraph.

10. What does Dillard say that she makes a pen drawing of in Chapter 2?
(a) The scenery outside her study carrel.
(b) Cows on a hilltop.
(c) People pulling into the parking lot.
(d) Snapping turtles.

11. Who is the main character in a story told by Ernest Thompson Seton?
(a) An Eskimo man.
(b) An Algonquin woman.
(c) A Native American woman.
(d) A fisherman.

12. What was knocking on the carrel window as Dillard worked in Roanoke?
(a) A June bug.
(b) Rain.
(c) Mosquitos.
(d) A bat.

13. What book was Dillard working on in Roanoke, Virginia?
(a) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
(b) An American Childhood.
(c) Holy the Firm.
(d) Living by Fiction.

14. Who said a long poem takes between five and ten years to write?
(a) Walt Whitman.
(b) Emily Dickinson.
(c) John Berryman.
(d) Maya Angelou.

15. Who is the Danish aristocrat mentioned in Chapter 2?
(a) Sverre Magnus.
(b) Wilhelm Dinesen.
(c) Osip Mandelstam.
(d) Wallace Stevens.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Dillard's study on Cape Cod?

2. Which author would only write poetry when he was '...rather out of health'?

3. What is needed in the world more than another excellent manuscript, as far as Dillard is concerned?

4. How did Dillard get into the library in Roanoke late at night?

5. Dillard believes that some writers weaken their resolve to discard parts of their work. Why?

(see the answer keys)

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