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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In working-class France, what did Dillard say that experienced workers tell an apprentice who gets hurt or tired?
(a) It is the trade entering his body.
(b) He does not know his limits.
(c) He fits himself to the job.
(d) He is adapting himself.

2. Who or what will teach someone to write, according to Dillard in Chapter 3?
(a) The author.
(b) The blank page.
(c) A fellow writer.
(d) Opacity.

3. What did Dillard realize when she spoke to the local sheriff in Chapter 3?
(a) She was a good, sane person.
(b) She was like one who worked in a factory all day.
(c) She loved running a ferryboat.
(d) She loved writing.

4. How long does the twilight linger on the island on Haro Strait in June and July?
(a) Until nearly midnight.
(b) Until nine at night.
(c) Until dawn.
(d) Until seven p.m.

5. What is the finished work's relationship to the vision of it, as viewed by Dillard?
(a) A final draft compared to a second draft.
(b) Something new compared to an antique.
(c) Well-known passages compared to the vision filled in.
(d) Something unchanging compared to something temporal.

Short Answer Questions

1. Dillard repeated the phrase, 'It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay' over and over like a song in Chapter 5. What poem is this line from?

2. As put by Dillard, what is the vision in a writer's or painter's work?

3. Why did Dillard momentarily feel she must quit writing in Chapter 3?

4. According to Glenn's story, what was Ferrar after in the water?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How does Dillard say that she learned the correct way to split wood on the chopping block?

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

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

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

7. What does Dillard mean in Chapter 5 when she writes, '...instead we watch television and miss the show'?

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

9. How does Dillard say that she believes a writer must control his or her own energies in order to work?

10. 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?

(see the answer keys)

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