Enjoy this quick quiz. Answers below.

1. Which of the following is the protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye?

* Charles Darnay
* Holden Caufield
* Phillip Pirrip
* Nick Carraway

2. Which surname belongs to a trio of literary sisters?

* Brown
* Burns
* Barrett
* Bronte

3. Which of the following is NOT a work of William Shakespeare?

* Titus Andronicus
* Julius Caesar
* Mourning Becomes Electra
* Love’s Labours Lost

4. In the phrase, “If I were to never see you again…” the speaker is guilty of…

* a split infinitive
* a dangling modifier
* a misplaced modifier
* an unqualified superlative

5. Which of the following authors was NOT primarily a poet?

* Walt Whitman
* T.S. Eliot
* e.e. cummings
* Henry James

6. Which of the following authors was NOT a contemporary of the others?

* Gertrude Stein
* Ernest Hemingway
* John Milton
* F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. Who, once called “The little lady who started a big war,” by Abraham Lincoln, authored Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

* Harriet Beecher Stowe
* Charlotte Bronte
* Emile Zola
* Hilda Doolittle

8. Which woman, author of Mules and Men and Their Eyes were Watching God, was rediscovered by Alice Walker?

* Toni Morrison
* Nadine Gordimer
* Zora Neale Hurston
* Isak Dennison

9. What Dickens’ novel begins, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?”

* Hard Times
* A Tale of Two Cities
* Nicholas Nickleby
* Great Expectations

10. What word, repeated three times, begins the speech from which William Faulkner took the title for The Sound and The Fury?

*Tomorrow
*Yesterday
*Today
*Someday

~ ~ ~

ANSWERS:
1. Holden Caufield
2. Bronte
3. Mourning Becomes Electra
4. split infinitive
5. Henry James
6. John Milton
7. Harriet Beecher Stowe
8. Zora Neale Hurston
9. Tale of Two Cities
10.Tomorrow

Congratulations to Melissa Marsh! You’ve won an autographed copy of Tricia Goyer’s brand new release, Arms of Deliverance: A Story of Promise. Please email me your snail mail addy and I’ll get it out to you soon!

Indeed, the great paradox of the writer’s life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people. ~ Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers

As a child, I remember being intensely withdrawn at times. I kept diaries, read voraciously, and invented imaginary characters. Through the pages of biographies and novels, I felt released to explore other worlds. My friends became Emily Dickinson, Louise May Alcott, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. Their worlds enthralled me, and I yearned to write and connect in similar ways.

But writers spend the bulk of their time alone—struggling to make that all-important connection with the reader. Some give up. It’s hard to work without a certain amount of emotional support and financial backing. In my family of origin, writing was laughed at. And so I studied nursing, but years later returned to my first passion.

It’s like Betsy Lerner says, “But if you can’t give it up, if hearing how impossible the odds are only makes you dig in deeper, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve got natural talent. Your job is to marshal the talent you do have and find people who believe in your vision. What’s important, finally, is that you create, and that those creations define for you what matters most, that which cannot be extinguished even in the face of silence, solitude, and rejection.”

I balance all that with something Ethel Herr, author of An Introduction to Christian Writing has written:

We ought to keep His honor foremost. If His pleasure is our goal, His honor will be our prize. We will gladly accept whatever limitations He puts on our advancement and personal recognition, as long as He can be glorifed.

For me, this is what matters most.

Reminder: Book drawing on July 29th! I’m giving away one autographed copy of Arms of Deliverance by author Tricia Goyer. If you haven’t entered the drawing yet, just post a comment either here or under “Blog Tour: Meet Tricia Goyer.” Be sure to check back on Saturday for the winner!

  

And for you quote collectors, here you go:

“The only writers who sell are the ones who submit.” ~ Lena Nelson Dooley

“Craft can be learned; endurance can’t. Endurance is a function of desire. When the force of our desire exceeds the inertia of our reluctance a book is born.” ~ Alton Gansky

Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction.” ~ Randy Ingermanson

While I’m away from the computer a couple days, I leave you with several quotes to enjoy. Hubby has melanoma, so we’re in the middle of consults with the oncologist and plastic surgeon this week. I’ll catch up with you soon!

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

A book ought to be an ice pick to break up the frozen sea within us. ~ Franz Kafka

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. ~ Winston Churchill

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ Voltaire

People who are passionate about reading do not have to be convinced of its benefits… We turn to books when we are lonely or when other people overwhelm us. Books are there for us whether we’re celebrating or in mourning. ~ Elisabeth Ellington/Jane Freimiller

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
~ E. M. Forster

A book is a gift you can open again and again. ~ Garrison Keillor

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~ Sir Richard Seele

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. ~ Francis Bacon

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one. ~ Oswald Chambers

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. ~ Mark Twain

This painful cycle—threatening thought, anxious reaction, and full retreat—is a fundamental cycle in the lives of creative people. Most creators are not aware of the existence of this cycle or that anxiety is a mighty brake preventing them from creating. . . Most creators do not give anxiety its due. ~ Eric Maisel, The Van Gogh Blues

If I weren’t a believer in Christ, the above quote would leave me bewildered. There is, after all, a certain amount of angst involved in the creative process. But I’m come to view my writing as service for God. Therefore, the sheer panic that wells up when facing a difficult project is assuaged by 1 Thessalonians 5:24: “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.” If He calls me to write, He will also enable me.

In light of that, hold onto this:

God assumes full responsibility for enabling us to carry out the work He assigns. He will never leave us to accomplish a task by mere human ability. ~ Charles Stanley