This month, we travel to the New Zealand chapter of 26 to meet Kat Mason, talking all things work, wine, and words.
Tell us a bit about yourself – where are you from and what do you do?
Kia ora! I’m Kat.
Nō Ingarangi ahau
The words roll in my mouth
Like stones
Along the course of the Wairau
Settling to become
Entangled with the roots
Of the Sauvignon Blanc
That bought me here –
Half a world from
What is no longer home
But where my roots lie
Kei Aotearoa ahau, e noho ana
I’m a transplanted Brit, recovering Essex girl, and new-Kiwi-citizen, living in Marlborough, New Zealand – the Sauvignon Blanc capital of the world.
I work in marketing for Cloudy Bay Vineyards, where I get to balance my love of stories with my love of wine. I have a strange and varied role, under the title of Wine Communications Manager, and one of my foci is to identify, shape and tell the stories that lie behind our wines, our place, our past and our present. We are about to turn forty (which is old for New Zealand wine, believe me), so I’ve been working with our archives and with our Founders to record the true (and the tall) stories that have shaped who we are.
Where did your love of words come from?
I am reasonably sure I was born with an innate love of words (my mother will claim that I came out of the womb talking, which is an undeniably strange and uncomfortable image).
My family are consummate storytellers with the proverbial gift of the gab, people my (Anglo Saxon) grandmother would describe has having been “vaccinated with a gramophone needle”. However, I was an only child, and therefore for wont of an audience, I often used to tell myself stories. I wasn’t exactly talking to myself but rather, narrating; reading aloud from a book that was in my head. It sounds a little sad when written down, but I was always very happy in the company of a good story.
My parents were both big readers, and I was lucky that my dad loved reading aloud. He read all of The Lord of the Rings to me when I was around 8, with voices for all the characters. I was so nervous when the movie trilogy came out that Peter Jackson wouldn’t have kept my dad’s choices, but fortunately they had both read the same parts of the appendices. I kept reading ahead, as I couldn’t wait to find out what happened, but I also didn’t want to miss out on him reading, so I never let it slip.
As I was an only child, in the age before the internet, I also read anything I could get my hands on. My mother always wanted to be an archaeologist, so our shelves were full of historical fiction, ancient mythology, and tales of the strange adventures of explorers. My favourite authors as a child were Rosemary Sutcliff and Alan Garner, and I still revisit them as an adult. In fact, it was a book of Rosemary Sutcliff’s that led me into quite a fierce debate with my university professor, when I found it almost impossible to let go of her fictional account of the Y Gododdin in favour of a more historically likely alternative.
Anyway, that’s a round about way of saying that I’ve loved words for as long as I can remember – and don’t see that changing any time soon.
What made you join 26? And how long have you been a member?
I am a shiny new member. This year, I made the decision that it was finally time to get on with the book I’ve been talking about writing for around 20 years now. So I enrolled in various creative writing classes and was looking for some creative outlets to give some accountability. I mentioned to this to the amazing copywriter who does a lot of work for us at Cloudy Bay, and he suggested joining 26. Thanks Hayden.
Have you been involved in any 26 projects?
I have only been involved so far with one of the local NZ mini projects, which was based on the Page 6, Line 26 challenge. We had 260 words to write a piece starting with the line, ‘The right hand side of the drawing shows an arm.’ – line 26, Page 26 from ‘Dancers on a Plane’ by Cage, Cunningham & Johns.
What’s your ideal scenario for writing? (A coffee shop? Quiet retreat? With or without music? What do you do to get yourself in the right frame of mind?)
Unfortunately for my sleep patterns and the requirement to be a functional adult during daytime hours, I’m a night owl when it comes to writing. I have ideas during the day, and they’ll get recorded as voice notes, or written into the notes app on my phone. However, the best time for me to get my thoughts in order and words on a page, is at night.
I am lucky enough to have a study, so I hide out in there, sometimes with a little wine to help lubricate the process. I often write long hand initially and then type things up to edit and shape, pare and improve. Music always, but never with words. I tend to listen to a lot of film soundtracks, but will sometimes lean into electronica and trance when a little more energy is required. And a small dance break is never a bad thing, right? Right?
What are you working on at the moment?
Well the Big Project is The Book I Have Meant To Write… It’s barely embryonic, consisting of a some wireframing, some scribbled notes, an opening chapter that I wrote to just get SOMETHING down, and various paragraphs, scraps of dialogue, and voice notes (it turns out I still talk to myself and tell myself stories). It’s a fantasy for younger readers. There are Romans, and a particularly chatty Kestrel that hovers at the side of the A12.
Could you tell us about a piece of writing you’re particularly proud of?
I am not a “proper” writer, so I don’t have much published as “me”. However, I used to have a blog before I moved to New Zealand. It was mostly about wine (surprisingly enough), but also about food, family, and – importantly – the joy of beautiful shoes. It was this blog that opened the door for me to come and work in the wine industry in New Zealand, as I had quite a few readers and was deemed to have influence. I assume it was the writing about wine that helped, not the shoes, but I cannot be entirely sure.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I still get a lot of inspiration from other people’s writings, which I hope one is allowed to be (cf. note above – I am not a “proper” writer). I have read a lot of Robert MacFarlane recently, which I have found to be quite unlocking of ideas and thoughts – I love his way of describing the impact of history and people on places. And the impact of places on people and history.
However, I am also inspired by the beauty of where I live. It’s a cliché of course, but New Zealand really is quite astonishingly beautiful. I’ll be driving through mountains, or along the ocean, or even up my driveway towards a range of folded hills, and I’ll have parts of a story, a concept, or a line of dialogue pop into my head. The challenge is then to work out which are useful now, and which go in a scraps basket for future sewing projects!