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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 book was Dillard working on in Roanoke, Virginia?

2. What do television and films do to the body's senses, according to Dillard?

3. Who said a long poem takes between five and ten years to write?

4. What do experienced writers urge young men and women to learn, according to Chapter 1?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Dillard say that she made a pen drawing of the scenes outside her library window?

2. Why did the inchworm in Dillard's story keep asking itself, "What! No further"?

3. Why does Dillard believe that putting together a book is interesting and exhilarating?

4. Why does Dillard feel that an appealing workplace for a writer should be avoided?

5. How does Dillard say that she defines the meaning of schedules, in Chapter 2?

6. What is the meaning of Thoreau's note that "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them"?

7. Why is 'the path' of the line of writing, as described in Chapter 1 by Dillard, not to be considered the actual work?

8. In Chapter 1, what does Dillard say she thinks of as the usual reasons for an author getting stuck in a book?

9. What, outside Dillard's library window, proved to cause the most distraction to her work?

10. When Dillard was working in the library at night, how did she find her way around in the dark?

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

Dillard taped up her pen drawing of the scene outside her window to the venetian blinds. Explain how this helped her concentrate on her work.

What was missing in the drawing of the scene that was really outside the window? Why wasn't it enough for her to just close the blinds?

Essay Topic 3

Explain the vision of what a projected work of art is, whether it be writing or painting. How does the vision lead one to a finished product?

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