I had a list of three thousand words arranged in advance, and I used all of them.

L'Homme foudroyé by Cendrars by you.

L’Homme foudroyé

Litblog A journey round my skull brings Blaise Cendrars interviewed for Paris Review in 1966 in which Cendrars reveals the importance of vocabularies to his work. Vocabulary is a linchpin to my own publishing: every subject or sensibility can be expressed in a core vocabulary … I notice people’s idiosyncratic word usage … I noticed last summer that Cities of the Red Night uses the word surmise quite frequently.

Cendrars went one step further in a loosely constrained writing technique, stating that:

“For several years, each time that I prepare to write a book, I first arrange the vocabulary I am going to employ. Thus, for L’Homme foudroyé, I had a list of three thousand words arranged in advance, and I used all of them. That saved me a lot of time and gave a certain lightness to my work. It was the first time I used that system.” –from [1] via [2]

More Cendrars eye candy from my Flickr account[3].