
Martin said they felt it important to maintain tiny details of Sullivan's life and all of the "gems" within the narrative.

They had a huge amount of material to go through, including the 24 diaries that served as the primary source for the book, covering his life from age 11 to 39. Martin joined the project by 2017. Both authors attended college in California. In 2015, Ozma broached the idea of a book with a small press company some friends were running and started to work on it heavily. Ozma learned about Sullivan, a Wauwatosa native, while he was in college. Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma have selected diary entries that chronicle Sullivan's life in their new book, “We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961-1991."
