At the May 2003 Book Expo America in Los Angeles, Joni Cole handed out advance copies of an exciting book, eventually released this September. Joni is a freelance writer with a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College with a focus on fiction.  It is second nature for her to imagine and create stories.  This way of thinking led her to the idea for the This Day:  Diaries from American Women project.

In the book’s introduction, Joni recalls dealing with her father’s massive stroke and a massive tax bill from the IRS at the same time.  When she found herself still in her pajamas after noon and feeling loads of self-pity, she began to wonder what other women were doing on this day:

Likely, they were on assignment…or helping their preschoolers self-actualize before kindergarten, or bonding with other women over luncheons (yes, luncheons!) at restaurants with linen tablecloths and salt cellars.  In this frame of mind, I decided to e-mail a few women from different circles of my life and ask what a day in their life was actually like.

She found their emails, however, describing lives that dispelled the fiction she had created.

The result of Joni’s wondering about others’ lives is a compelling collection of 35 “Day Diaries” from diverse women across America and over 500 excerpts from the day diaries of other women.  Ultimately, Joni invited two other women to join forces with her as editors: Rebecca Joffrey, a marketing executive and new mom, and B.K. Rakhra, a fiction writer.  The day diarists they chose to include Miss America, an inmate, a star forward for the WNBA, a double amputee, a TV celebrity, a New York Times reporter, a retired grandmother of two, the CEO if a corporation, a Mennonite, a Congresswoman, an at-home mom with two toddlers and the President of the National Organization of Women. In their writing, the contributors reveal the truth about what they are actually doing and thinking about during the course of a single day.  Readers get an intimate glimpse into how they really feel about their families, their jobs, and themselves.

Here are some excerpts from the book to give you a flavor of the diary entries.

4:15 P.M.  I’m listening to a phone message, something from my daughter’s daycare about her not getting on the van, when another call comes through. “Vicki, do you know where Josie is? She never got on the van and we’ve been looking for her for the past hour.”  Dear Lord, in the rush of the morning’s chaos–the babysitter, the preparing for class, the usual five-year-old drama–I forgot to call Josie’s daycare to tell them she wouldn’t be there after school. “A friend picked her up at three,” I confess. “I’m so sorry!”  The daycare has called my brother, my friends, the whole world it would seem, or at least all those on he emergency list. “Every number we have for you is wrong,” they tell me. “We had no way of getting in touch with you.”  My remorse is endless. Why didn’t the kindergarten teacher tell the van driver a friend had picked Josie up? Why didn’t I tell the van driver she wouldn’t be going to daycare?  “I swear to you I will never do this again. I promise. For the past hour, half a dozen well-meaning childcare providers were certain they had lost a five-year-old. What’s worse than losing a child?  Thinking you’ve lost a child when the parent knows exactly where the child is.

Vicki Forman, 40, La Canada, California, English Instructor, USC

 4:53 P.M. Oprah’s doing a show on dating after thirty-five. Some chick was tweakin’ about marriage and offspring and her lack of them at age thirty-one. “What if I never marry?!?” Apparently now she’s accepted and dealt with it (age thirty-six, I think).  I hope I’m married by thirty-three. I’m only twenty-one…I don’t need to be married right now. I so need to get my life in order…or at least on its way to being in order before I consider marriage.  I would really like to move out of my parents’ home and have some sense of independence…y’know, paying bills and just being a real grown-up first. But I think it would be nice to grow old with someone. Have someone there to share your life with. To have the type of love where you sleep better just b/c he’s sleeping beside you and you know you can reach out for him when you need him. Wow. I’m such a romantic sap…sometimes.

Maria Henson, 21, Norris City, Illinois

The busy mother of two young daughters, Joni Cole believed that including the day’s itinerary along with more traditional diary would illuminate individual women’s lives from the inside out.  “For the writer and reader alike, the collection of day diaries reveals the extraordinary in the ordinary. It evokes our uniqueness and our commonalities as American women. And it reminds us of the value and meaning inherent in any single day,” says Cole.

Sheila
Why is it almost always so interesting to read other people’s diaries?

Joni
There’s the curiosity factor. I love knowing the inside details about other people’s personal and work lives. Then there’s the comparison factor. Am I normal?  How do my job, my relationships, my life compare to those of other women? Last, but hardly least, there’s an incredible value in sharing another human being’s perspective, if only for a single day. A day diary illuminates the individual behind the stereotype. The woman behind her labels.

Sheila
How did you find the participants for your day diary project?

Joni
Word of mouth went a long way, both in finding contributors and getting published.  Everywhere I went, I recruited.  I never shut up about the book. The response to our invitation to participate in This Day: Diaries from American Women was gratifying.  We witnessed a wave of enthusiasm, with the participants themselves recruiting friends, family members, co-workers, and others to be a part of this book project.

One evening, I sat at a table at a party with a New York Times reporter and his wife, so I talked and talked.  I had to because the reporter’s wife was a freelance writer who’d written for Family Circle.  When she approached them about interest in an article about the book, they said they were interested in excerpts.  Her introduction connected us to Family Circle, which ultimately ran three of the day diaries and part of the book’s introduction.

Sheila
What instructions did you offer the women who participated?

Joni
Those who said they wanted to participate received a confirmation packet, which told them that being a day diarist would involve a relatively small time commitment, but would be a great way to capture those meaningful details, thoughts, feelings, and insights that often fall through the cracks of any given day. By creating a day diary on Tuesday, October 15, 2002, and allowing us to share it with our readers, they would be contributing to the book’s power to illuminate our individuality and our points of connection as American women.

If recipients filled out the forms in the confirmation packet, we sent them an instruction packet. The confirmation packet and instructional packet emphasized the book’s themes of seeing beyond labels and breaking down stereotypes and touched many women, motivating them to participate. We also kept in touch with day diarists before and after the October 15th diary day through e-newsletters and emails.

Sheila
Were you surprised by the content of the responses?

Joni
We learned that women–even prominent women–aren’t often asked to speak in their own voices. Countless day diarists were surprised we would value their perspective enough to invite them to participate in this project. Yet, when you read their first-person accounts the content is interesting, powerful, and often inspirational.

The collection of day diaries reveals each day diarist is unique, but it also underscores interesting commonalities among women.  No matter who we are or where we live, by virtue of our gender we are all part of the powerful, quirky, and wonderful community of women, and that puts us in very good company.

Sheila
How do you feel about the book now that it is a finished product?

Joni
Reading the book satisfies my curiosity and I take away so much more because it has changed my perspective.  I have points of comparison with my own life.

For me, part of what inspired the book in the first place was my own very bad day. To understand what another woman’s day is like, that is not always saving the world and bonding with children and making six figure advances and having important meetings, helps me put my own expectations and fantasies of other women’s lives in perspective.

I felt normal, part of a community, that we are somehow all in this together, with all the ups and downs, better days and worse days.

If you look at some of the women who were faced with challenges during the day–doing a billion things at once, fighting cancer, experiencing money issues–and how they got through the day with humor and positive mental outlooks, you come away inspired.  I am truly able to snap out of it now when I am feeling sorry for myself or getting grouchy. Because of these women, I almost automatically know how to get a grip.  Attitude is what will make my day. Humor especially has an impact.  I am inspired by the women who were productive and achieved something–I saw that perseverance and just doing it work.  Women talk about walking up steps instead of taking the elevator, and I do that more.  They talk about a difficult task and how they go to the office and do it. And I feel like I can accomplish more.  Little moments are instructive, inspiring, and contagious. These women have become role models for me.

Sheila
How did you develop the proposal for this book project?

Joni
Before we wrote our book proposal, we kept day diaries on a specific day.  As a result of what we wrote, we saw how we get in our own way a lot and cause our own problems.  That’s one huge value of creating a day diary. You see in black and white how strong you are, what you accomplish in a day, and at the same time, you think, “Oh geez, look how I set myself up and contributed to my own misery. You can make a mini-assessment of who you are.

When we got our contributors’ entries, we found that all of them worked–they were specific, had good tone, and the voice in all of them was great.  Even when they were inconsistent, like more into in the morning and a laundry list at the end, they were still powerful. Some were more itinerary-oriented and didn’t include as many thoughts and feelings.  But all were strong.  Every diary was interesting because we saw through other women’s eyes for a moment’s time–what individuals noticed and worried about and what they took in stride amazed us.

We received a lot of feedback from the women about the value of keeping the diary to them, because it showed them their attitudes and outlooks.  How you live moment to moment is how you change your life.

One woman wrote about how after seeing her behavior in black and white, she began to listen to her husband rather than walking away.  Another assessed how many minutes she spent with my husband, realized that she barely even saw him and made some real changes.

Sheila
Where do you hope to go with the project now?

Joni
Our hope for the book is this: We would love for readers to use this book to break down the stereotypes we assign other people.  If you are not one, you don’t really know what an at-home mom is –labels are so reductive and we can see beyond them.  Stereotypes separate us as women when we should be bonding together.  We both label ourselves and others, which detrimental.  Right now we are doing The Great Day Exchange so we can promote day diarists. People make entries and swap with moms, sisters, daughter, and co-workers.

We hope that people will share this book and start to talk about it.  The conversations we’ve heard among readers move us. There is absolutely no predicting which of the entries individual readers will most resonate with.

We’d love to do a second volume by designating another day and soliciting more diarists.  We believe that if we did the project enough times, we would begin to provide readers with a historical perspective.  We’ve realized this from the fact that our trial day was before September 11, 2001 and the book diary day was after that.  Readers see how different we are as a culture and nation.

In my opinion, the day diary is an efficient tool:  it reveals regular people reporting regular stuff.

Sheila
That leads me to a question about how you handled so much material as editors.

Joni
As we got entries, we kept a database of excerpts that moved us. We organized entries under headings that seemed descriptive to us:  ATM moments, mommy moments, Oprah, 7-8 AM, argh and activism, for instance. Sometimes a heading like “chocolate,” which seemed like it would be a good one, disappeared because it was pervasive and didn’t need to be its own category.

Sheila
What was your process in finding a publisher for a simple but elegantly “high concept” book?

Joni
We researched agents in The Writer’s Market and located the top 50 New York agents, finding out what types of books and clients they represent.  We found one of them who had a nice feature written about her in Poets and Writers.

An agent knows about contracts and in the end negotiates.  The contract matters, from the size of the advance to the percentage of royalties, second book options, foreign rights, electronic rights, and serial rights.

Today, we are happily promoting the book and the idea of day diaries.  But very importantly, I believe our project wasn’t about “selling” to women.  Women resonated with the concept, and that is gratifying.

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If you are a member of a writing group or any kind of group (even a neighborhood or apartment building), you might enjoy encouraging people in your organization to record their thoughts, actions, and observations on one particular day.  Trading those Day Diaries or making some excerpts available on bulletin boards, in newsletters, or other publications can certainly help many get inside another’s life, see it from the inside out, and break down the kind of boundaries and stereotypes that keep us from befriending one another.