#David packer series#

Write an introduction and have someone review it. Do a lot of thinking at the front end, about the boundaries and your focus. Q: Do you have advice for other people who might want to write a memoir?Ī: Give it a try. I hope some of this will pass on readers and give insight into their lives, too. What an unexpected joy!Ī: So much, about me, my life and feelings, and about writing well. I felt like I was back there again, and this feeling brought laughter and tears. The things I wrote became real, as Pinocchio became a real boy. Ginny Wiley did the final editing.Ī: Reflecting and writing, remembering experiences that became far more than facts when I began to feel the emotions of those involved, old friends and the like. Dot Bergin our copy editor did a fine job. Nancy Daugherty who knew production and had worked at Pegasus Communications, also a book publisher, led us into print gracefully with Amazon. Q: Writing a book is not easy - what was the most difficult aspect for you?Ī: Not the writing part, but all the rest: the editing, formatting, and production. I have written numerous articles applying systems understanding to current issues, which appeared in The Systems Thinker, a popular newsletter in the systems field. I took a course at the Harvard Business School in 1960 where I was a member of a small group that wrote and distributed a book on the emerging field of Management Science that was mentioned in Business Week. In graduate school, my thesis was converted to a book by the MIT Press with the sexy title Resource Acquisition in Corporate Growth and was translated into Japanese, as well.

I think the idea of finding joy, in general, is of interest for everybody with an interest in how lives develop through time.Ī: When I was at MIT I was editor of the student newspaper. When Andrea Cleghorn offered a writing course and talked about her work, I knew a Memoir was the right medium for what had been on my mind for a long time.Ī: It is broad. And then I realized that the best way to save them in a lasting way would be in a real book. In fact, I was surprised to find how much was already written, scattered on my computer. More importantly, I have wanted to record these stories, remembrances, and opinions for the limited audience of my family and offspring for a long time. Amazing joys usually stem from unique events that involve leaning out and taking some risks.Ī: The obvious answer is I have just entered my 82nd year and time is increasingly limited. This distinction is more fully discussed in the book’s introduction and is important. So, the focus is narrower than an autobiography, which would be much longer, and may be boring. Instead, I focus on the joys and the adventures that create them. I do not deal with the joys of family or social interests in my adult life in this book. I call the parts “swaths.” The joy swath may be 10 percent, the more mundane may be 90 percent. The memoir is based on the idea that only a small portion of life creates the joys, but it is necessary to do all the rest, mundane or even painful, to enable one to experience the joy part. Q: What joys did you discover in writing your memoir?Ī: My focus is narrower but, I think, more powerful. I love to tell stories, I enjoy writing, and the idea of exploring my life for joys made this an exciting endeavor.

What can you tell us about Finding Joy?Ī: Well, it is a collection of stories from experiences of many joys I have felt deeply over the first 81 years of my life. Q: This is your first mainstream book, a memoir.

#David packer series#

Packer answered a series of questions for The Bedford Citizen: Now in his 82nd year, he takes a look at what happened next, as he became a Bedfordian, engineer, adventurer, internationalist, systems thinker, peace-builder and joy-finder. His future was wide open when he opted against a liberal arts school to attend MIT. Packer’s boyhood was spent in the Midwest, where curiosity led him to build his own telescope, fly a plane, and explore unmapped canyons. “I wrote to remember, Packer noted, “I ended up reliving my life in - surprisingly - many ways.” Compiled by The Bedford Citizen Memoirist David Packer, Image (c) 2018 all rights reserved – Click to view larger imageĭavid Packer, longtime Bedford resident is this weekend launching his new book, a memoir: Finding Joy: A Life Explored.