Palermo, Italy

Wednesday 3/11/09
Greetings from Palermo, Italy. We’ve had a beautiful, sunny day visiting colorful little fishing villages, a breath-taking 600-year old cathedral, and gorgeous scenery. If you like travel, you will love this type of cruising. We will stop at seven different ports – tomorrow we are at sea, Thurs. is Athens, Greece.
I figured out how to send my communications to you, but I might not be able to send these the same day I write them, because the ship is having great difficulty getting air waves or whatever that mysterious thing is that sends out emails.
As you may remember, I’m a low tech woman in a high tech world, so I’m just stumbling & bumbling through this process of sending blogs. Sometimes Daniel will be discussing computer stuff with me and he’ll say, "Oh that program is super simple to work. Anyone can do it – even you." I can never tell if that’s an insult or a compliment:)
So now I’ll catch you up on working on the Brilliance of the Sea. I think every ship is different. Here instead of working with the Cruise Director, I work with the Cruise Program Administrator. There are 3 other enrichment speakers on this cruise and she hasn’t met in person with any of us. Instead she communicates via voice mail and notes left on our door.
On this cruise, I will present 5 programs:
Secrets to Blast Away Procrastination
Clutter Clutter Everywhere
Is Trying to be Perfect making you & Everyone you know crazy?
Want to get rid of paper Clutter Fast?
Do You Have a Book in Your Heart That You Want to Write?

Hmmmmm, guess what I forgot to do? I never did introduce myself, did I?

Hi There,
My name is Rita Emmett and my husband Bruce & I live in Des Plaines, IL.
I’m a Recovering Procrastinator, a professional speaker and author of several best-selling books:
The Procrastinator’s Handbook
The Procrastinating Child: A Handbook for Adults to Help Children Stop Putting Things Off
The Clutter-Busting Hand book
and my latest book was published and released to book stores just last month:
Manage You Time to Reduce Your Stress: A Handbook for the Overworked, Overscheduled and Overwhelmed
(Do you think anyone will relate to that last title??)

So when I talk on cruise ships I speak about my books. Daniel knows that a lot of you have a book in your heart that you want to write, and don’t know how to get started. I told him that was a huge problem for me at the beginning also – how the heck to get started and how the heck do you write a book and how the heck do you get it published.
After a lot of time, study, learning and expense, I completed my first book and it sold 100,000 copies in the first 14 months, landed me an interview with Katie Couric and is now published in 32 countries.

So Daniel and I put together an easy inexpensive program called The Procrastinator’s Guide to Authorship (www.helpwritingbook.com) to help with all those questions. If you want to write a book, this will help you side-step having to take a ton of expensive, time-consuming classes and seminars to figure it all out.
As you can imagine, when you pitch ideas to a cruise line AND send them a copy of your book, it gets their attention.

The reason I gave you all those details is because usually you suggest only 3 topics for a cruise. But because I’m a professional speaker and have these programs (with Power Point and hand outs) already put together, and since I love doing this, I gave them suggestions for 5 topics and they want all five. They are happy and I’m happy.

Tuesday was the "Blast Away Procrastination" program, and we had great fun. One of the people attending said "Good title. This class is a blast." Tomorrow I’ll present "Clutter, Clutter Everywhere".
And now I’m off to see if the ship is capturing that mysterious stuff that sends off emails so I can send this to you.
Cruising along,
Rita Emmett