Some stereotypes hold the truth. Since we couldn’t afford a vacation this summer, we arranged a couple of our versions of “staycations.” For us that means driving some place a couple hours away, staying in a hotel for a night or two, and exploring a new place for the weekend. We’ve done that to explore the Lancaster area and a couple of times to the Poconos. When possible, and affordable, we like to stay in unusual places rather than the typical hotel. For example, around Lancaster we try to book a caboose at the Red Caboose. Since those are expensive over the weekend, typically we have to take a vacation day or two to do them before the weekend proper sets in. On a trip to the Endless Mountains region, we stayed at the Victorian Charm Inn in Towanda. This is a converted ten-bedroom house from the late Victorian era. Not a typical hotel, it’s an inspiring place to stay.
What I mean by stereotypes is that such places inspire me to write in their genres. After staying in the Red Caboose, I typically write fiction about trains. I’d been on a gothic kick when we stayed at Victorian Charm and indeed, it inspired gothic writing. Not that we could’ve afforded it, but when we were looking for a house, I really wanted to buy a Victorian. We looked at a couple but neither one had been well kept up. I thought they would inspire my writing. Perhaps it would get old, living in such a house and reading Poe and other Victorian writers, but I wonder if it might have led to more gothic stories. The fiction I do write tends to draw from my experience of living in various places. Victorian mansions have a feel to them.
Writing is mostly a matter of discipline, rather than inspiration. All writers, I suspect, crave inspiration. I know that I do. When I awoke to a thunderstorm in a Victorian mansion I experienced something that had never happened to me before in real life. It made me wonder what it would’ve been like to have been able to live in such a place. The cracked plaster, the faded elegance. The nooks and alcoves. An honest-to-goodness fainting couch. And who knows? Perhaps a ghost or two. Our house was built in the Victorian Era, but by those of much more modest means. It is an inspirational place to write, but it’s also the place associated with work. That’s why, in stereotypical behavior, we need to get away on the occasional staycation.