INTERVIEWER: MAHMOUD MANSI
1-HR Revolution-Middle East: How did you start your career as a writer?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I had always enjoyed writing at school, but when I went to university I studied education. It was only after I had my children that returned to writing. In 2007 I did a master’s in creative writing at Wits University, and it changed my career.
2-HR Revolution-Middle East: What were the obstacles that opposed you?
Ms. Isabella Morris:The only obstacles that have ever opposed my writing have been those in my mind.
3-HR Revolution-Middle East: As the Chief of Staff to the Democratic Alliance’s Mayoral Candidate for Johannesburg 2016, how do you describe your job description?
Ms. Isabella Morris: My job is really to support the mayoral candidate to achieve the party’s objectives in their attempt to ensure he wins the local municipal election in Johannesburg.
4-HR Revolution-Middle East: How did you shift and start this new career?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I look at it as a detour. I took the position to support a client, Herman Mashaba, who became a friend. He is standing for mayor because he believes that we have to stand for the change we want to see.
5-HR Revolution-Middle East: What are the obstacles that you face in this field? And how do you overcome them?
Ms. Isabella Morris: It’s a position in a political party. Most of the obstacles are internal. I have to focus on the mayoral candidate. He has seconded me into the position as his chief of staff, he has certain expectations of me, and it is my responsibility to ensure that I deliver on those expectations. I’m not in this position to be popular. I’m here to ensure that the candidate has the best support to help him win the campaign, and I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that.
6-HR Revolution-Middle East: What was the title of your first article / story that was published in South Africa? How did you take this first step?
Ms. Isabella Morris: The first article I published was called “Hair it is”. It was a humourous piece about women and their hair.I think it was published because every woman can identify with a bad hair day!
7-HR Revolution-Middle East: Can writing become a profitable career in South Africa?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Writing can be profitable anywhere in the world. It’s always a case of finding your niche. Sometimes you need to experiment until you find where you fit in and where you can make a living.
8-HR Revolution-Middle East: How did you establish an international career and name in writing?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I wrote for foreign publications, I engaged with writers in other countries. I won awards that elevated my position in the literary community.
9-HR Revolution-Middle East: What is the best way to brand your name as a writer?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Apply common sense. Don’t tweet. Be consistent. Publish regularly.
10-HR Revolution-Middle East: You won several writing awards. Did this help you further in your writing career?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Yes, to a degree. Awards raise your profile; you find your name popping up on Google. It’s a great feeling, but it’s got a life-span. However, you can’t rely on awards from a couple of years ago to sustain interest in you as a writer. You’ve got to keep on writing, and more importantly, keep on publishing. Sometimes I take work on, not for the pay, but for the publishing credit or credibility in a genre.
11-HR Revolution-Middle East: You have a passion for education and you worked as a teacher. What are the qualities of a professional teacher?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I am passionate about education, I’m less excited about public education systems and for that reason have usually only taught adults privately. A professional teacher needs to remember she is there to raise her students to awareness. Sadly, so many teachers enter the profession for job security and have no interest in the responsibility they have towards the lives they are helping to shape.
12-HR Revolution-Middle East: You also work as a ghost writer. Can you please tell us more about that? And what are the struggles you go through in this job?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I have worked extensively as a ghostwriter. It has been a very profitable genre. Earlier I mentioned that to make a career out of writing you have to find a niche.
Ghostwriting was a niche that found me and it has been very lucrative for me. It’s given me the opportunity to be a freelance writer, to dictate the terms of my career. It’s not without its pitfalls.
I’m interested in writing stories about business tycoons.Their stories are usually a combination of personality and business acumen and risk. When you deal with successful people you deal with big egos. It’s a bit of a balancing act. I have to take charge of the book-writing and remind them of who is in charge of the writing and insisting in what goes in the book and what doesn’t. The nicest part is that you become friends with your subjects.
I’d love to write the biography of Samih Sawiris or the Sawiris family, both he and his family’s successes fascinate me. I’m African and I love writing about people on our beautiful African continent. I don’t think business is anywhere as exciting as it is in Africa. I find it so compelling that my next book may be on the Chinese economic migrants into Africa.
13-HR Revolution-Middle East: What is your advice to young writers who try to approach publishers?
Ms. Isabella Morris: The most important thing is to approach the publishers who publish the type of writing you write. If you write horror then don’t approach a romance publisher; if you write historical non-fiction, then don’t approach a contemporary political publisher. This is the major reason why publishers turn down so many writers, simply because the writer is not approaching the publisher that publishes in the writer’s genre.
14-HR Revolution-Middle East: You also work as a freelancer. What is your criticism regarding management in newspapers and magazines? And what can the management do to support the freelancers?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Newspaper and magazine editors really give freelancers a raw deal. They underpay them or offer exposure instead of payment. Exposure doesn’t pay the writer’s bills. As a writer I refuse to give my work away for nothing. I’ll keep on pitching the piece until someone picks up on it. Management are unlikely to change, they’re under the whip from the bean counters. If it’s not profitable it’s not going to happen, that’s the bottom line.
15-HR Revolution-Middle East: Have you ever dealt before with an HR department? Can you please tell us the situation? And what advice do you have for them?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Yes, as a freelancer I constantly deal with HR departments. They usually treat freelancers pretty grimly. They want every possible piece of personal information, and even if you have worked for them the previous month, they need you to fill out the same details on the same lengthy forms for every freelance task undertaken for the company. It’s infuriating. They need to do something to streamline their dealings with freelancers and make it more user-friendly.
16-HR Revolution-Middle East: You traveled to many countries. How did this affect your career in general?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Well, you get primary, secondary, and tertiary education, but I’d call travel global education. It affected me on almost every level. Probably the most important aspect of world travel is that it stopped methinking in a vacuum, it exposed me to new ways of looking at situations. Travel also helped me to expand my writing career, it has been great for freelance travel articles and has also given me wonderful settings for my fiction writing. Writers who travel win every which way.
17-HR Revolution-Middle East: One of the countries you visited was Egypt. What is your opinion regarding journalism and writing there?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I think that the Egyptian journalists and writers who write with the depth and passion they feel about their country are under appreciated and undervalued, and very often endangered by ignorant and fearful officials. However, I’ve read much contemporary Egyptian writing that has been translated into English and I’m absolutely blown away by the way expression has been informed and shaped into beautiful metaphors as a result of the politics. I empathise with writers in Egypt because for 46 years, South African writers were imprisoned, beaten, banned, and murdered. It’s one hell of a price to pay, and brave men and women across the world write every day in the name of freedom of speech.
18-HR Revolution-Middle East: From your experience and observation, what advice would you have to Egyptian employees?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I’ve always been impressed at the level of linguistic excellence in Egypt, many urban Egyptians speak more than their home language of Arabic, some of them speaking two or three additional languages. Being multi-lingual is a great asset, but they should attempt to really master one additional language so as to give themselves employment opportunities elsewhere in the world. We live in a global society, so few people are choosing to remain in the countries they’ve been born in, and travel globally to expand their employment experience.
19-HR Revolution-Middle East: If you were given the chance to become the Minister of Arts & Culture in South Africa, what are the first actions you are going to take?
Ms. Isabella Morris: I’d really prefer the job of Minister of Tourism, but if it was to be Minister of Arts & Culture, the first thing I would do is establish a directory of working artists and writers and cultural performers. I’d attempt to tie them to business ventures where their skills would be an asset to the company and the artist would be paid. Nando’s, is an international brand of chicken take-away food that was founded in South Africa, and they are a brilliant example of how to integrate business with art. Every piece of art that adorns the walls of their international stores is made by South African artists who are paid well for their paintings. Every piece of beautiful furniture in their international stores is made by South African craftsmen.
20-HR Revolution-Middle East: As a feminist, what are the common struggles that face working women in South Africa? And what are your suggestions to top managers and HRs to work on this problem?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Women in South Africa face extreme hardships. Very often they are single parents. There is no access to daycare for poor South African women. Women travel far to their places of employment and have to wake up well before dawn and travel in darkness both to and from work, making them vulnerable to physical violence. I’d suggest that top managers and HR departments work with women to find what would make them happier at work. Could a form of daycare be started on-site so that working mothers don’t have that concern? Could the company employ a taxi-driver to meet employees at a certain point and bring them to work? Could the company be flexible about working hours to facilitate mothers who have all the responsibilities of parenting?
21-HR Revolution-Middle East:What is your comment regarding unemployment in South Africa? What are your suggested solutions?
Ms. Isabella Morris: Currently South Africa has the highest rate of youth unemployment and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. I hang my head in shame. There is only one solution. The legislation that frustrates the ease of starting a business needs to be removed so that anyone who has a business idea can start their own business. Business licenses should be cheap enough for anyone to afford them. Let people be responsible for themselves. I also support eliminating the minimum wage to allow people to negotiate terms of employment. Some people don’t have skills, some of them are prepared to work for less than the minimum wage to learn a skill. These people won’t continue working for a low wage once they’ve learned the skill, they’ll move on, up and up the employment ladder, and that’s a great thing.
Thank You 🙂