Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip. 

In his journal entry for September 3, 1962, Indiana writes that it was a lovely end-of-summer kind of day, but that, feeling guilty over not working the day before, he confined himself to the studio. He first describes preparing for the fruition of the "Johnson painting" (A Divorced Man Has Never Been the President, which had been purchased by the architect Philip Johnson). He notes that he worked on its central star and gave its field a second coat of blue, and that the painting "should now be in shape for leaving [the] studio." Indiana records that although he spent the greater part of the day working on the painting, that he also began his first Die construction. The entry includes a sketch of the sculpture's top detail with the note "chisel away low relief for first set—one of four." He then describes working on The Black Diamond American Dream #2, shadowing the letters of "EAT" and touching up the body of the painting in vine (a black paint). He writes that he almost came to the decision to add more color to the work, as "its blackness depresses me now."

Indiana often referred to current events in his journals. Here he records the death of the poet E. E. Cummings, noting that it "strikes closer than many of [the] other recent terminations [to] an era which impinged on my life from school days on." He also mentions that thousands were dead after an earthquake in Iran (which occurred on September 1, in the Buin Zahra area).