A few years ago, I told the mother of my daughter’s best friend that I had closed my public relations business and was now freelance writing. She looked at me sympathetically and said, “Maybe you should consider getting a part-time job to make some money.” While I made sure my daughter told her when I had my first six-figure year, the general public still believes that freelance creatives are “starving artists.” Even worse? Many freelancers buy into that paradigm. Today, however, it’s not unco

I try to build strong relationships with my clients, and this means delivering copy that meets their expectations. But in order to do that, I first need to have an idea about what, exactly, those expectations entail—ideally, they’re outlined in the brief. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, clients provide cryptic briefs or, worse yet, no brief at all—just a couple of sentences in an email about the content they’re looking to create. In situations where a brief is ambiguous or nonexisten

Awe is an underrated emotion, and there's plenty of research to prove it, writes Deborah Farmer Kris in The Washington Post. A number of studies suggest that encountering something vast or wondrous can benefit our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. "It makes us curious rather than judgmental. It makes us collaborative. It makes us humble, sharing, and altruistic. It quiets the ego so that you're not thinking about yourself as much" says psychologist Dacher Keltner. Unfortunately, highly

Today’s guest is Danna Lorch from Brookline, Massachusetts. Danna has been a freelance writer for 11 years, mostly focusing on journalism. She has covered the visual arts, design, architecture, the trades and parenting. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Architectural Digest and many other publications. Before becoming a writer, she managed nonprofits in the Middle East and Africa. Then, she covered the emerging art scene in the United Arab Emirates for seven years bef

Today we’d like to introduce you to Danna Lorch. Thanks for sharing your story with us Danna. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there. I actually started out in Boston studying at Harvard for a Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies. While I was there, I met my future husband in a terribly ugly seminar room above a CVS. However, it took us seven years to go from good friends to married. When I was studying, it was the peak of the Bush era with everyone and their brother joi

Danna Lorch was immersed in a literary world from an early age. When she was nine, her father and mother Jim and Randy Weiss started a storytelling company that created and sold audio cassettes of classical literature and Greek mythology in northern California’s Bay Area where Lorch grew up. Many of her earliest childhood memories involved following her father to his storytelling performances or visiting bookstores and libraries. As a teenager, Lorch’s parents enrolled her in the University of

From galleries tucked inside budget hotels to surprising street art installations in Satwa, here’s where local art and design buffs go for their culture fix. Dubai Street Museum “In 2016, street artists were invited to use 16 of the buildings lining 2nd December Street in Satwa as a blank canvas, creating murals that celebrate the Emirates’ cultural heritage. The public art initiative was called ‘Dubai Street Museum,’ and the head-turning results include enormous falcons, Emirati children, fis