Fantasies of Fame

Was I dreaming, or did novelist Ann Beattie whisper in my ear that she had not done her homework?

It was Day Two of the Key West Writers Workshop led by instructor and author Harry Mathews (The Conversions, Cigarettes). Seated around a rectangular table in the historic Village Hall in downtown Key West, Fla., 11 aspiring novelists and poets who had plunked down $300 for eight hours of dicta and philosophy from the enigmatic Mathews listened in awed silence.

Some of the awe was because of Mathews -- a bespectacled, bald, serious writing professor (Columbia and Bennington) who had a habit resting both elbows on the table and leaning forward, peering intently at each participant as if defying them to doubt his proclamations. And then there was yesterday's surprise discovery that one of the 11 students was the acclaimed novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie (Picturing Will; My Life, Starring Dara Falcon). Seated at the table's end opposite Mathews, the striking, smiling, silken-haired literary phenom seemed as dazed by Mathews as the rest of us.

But the major kick for the amateurs, or why we had traveled thousands of miles for a weekend workshop, had more to do with where we were on this sunny 70-degree morning. Would-be writers, hanging with the pros in the tropical lair of word-gods like Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams and now Beattie, we were living out a literary fantasy. Really.

In this age of extreme adventure vacations, you could, for the right price, indulge any lifelong fantasy for a week or a day. Ante up for baseball fantasy camp and shag grounders hit by Cub great Billy Williams in Mesa, Ariz. Sign on for the crew of a tall sailing ship, and climb to the crow's nest 40 feet above the Caribbean. Register for the Navajo cultural exchange, and sleep in an authentic hogan, 100 yards down the hill from an authentic outhouse.

And to provide a similar fix for the countless number of aspiring writers in the United States and England, conferences, conventions, writers' groups, writers' colonies and writing workshops have bloomed. An Internet search turns up hundreds of such offerings each season. Some are affiliated with schools and universities; others are private, for-profit monthly services. Registration fees vary -- from $35 for a single Adventure Travel writing session to $1,200 for a week at the prestigious Stonecoast Conference in Maine, including credits -- and depend on the length of experience, and, of course, the name value (read celebrity) of the pros who will be in attendance.

Add the expense of flights, car rentals and bed and breakfasts (literary types eschew hotel chains), and its easy to see how an entire industry is making money off those who think and type and, most importantly, dream. The market pool is limitless; you don't have to be blessed with athletic talent, beauty or wealth to entertain a serious ambition to write. All you need is the conviction, secret or public, that you have a story to tell.

For a total of about $1,500 (including tuition, lodging, too much Key West Sunset lager and not enough key lime pie), I participated in this year's Key West Writers' Workshop (KWWW). Sponsored by Florida Keys Community College, the program schedules weekend writers gatherings, each proctored by a reputable artist. This year's instructors included novelist Robert Stone, poets Robert Creely, Sharon Olds and Carolyn Forch, and poet/novelist/essayist Harry Mathews, in whose workshop I was lucky enough to secure a seat (writing samples were required). The KWWW Web site urges those interested to apply early, as the workshops fill fast because of the additional lure of the brilliant Florida Keys sunsets in the middle of February, when the rest of the country is freezer burned and stir crazy.