It took Vaculík eight days to write the appeal. He did so every day when he returned from work. He could not write until everyone was in bed because, as he says himself, he had a 'stupid flat'. He could not write faster, because even at night there was no peace and quiet, as the tram tracks in the street were being replaced by new ones. Thus he did not make the deadline. The group of scientists, who asked him to write the manifesto, had to wait. There was a meeting where he was supposed to bring the draft of the text, but he only came to make excuses. At the beginning, he only wanted to use one thousand words but it was not enough so he wanted to make it a rounded number to exactly two thousand words.
The initiators were also thinking about asking him to sign the appeal. Vaculík proposed Yvonne Přenosilova, since he liked her song Už to nejde dál and also Josef Smrkovsky, however to which somebody said that it would be a tragedy. They also tried to reach the minister of culture Miroslav Galuška, but they were not successful. And then they said to themselves: "Either we get all the politicians who have their liking in the nation or we will not compromise them individually."
When the text was finished Vaculík needed to know how many words it had. He was very busy and did not have the time, so he asked his son Martin, to count the words and make a pencil mark after each hundred. Later, when Vaculik was checking at random one hundred words to see if it was exact, he counted seven more words. In the next hundred, there were ten words missing. No hundred corresponded to the exact number. "I told my son sharply," he wrote in Literární Listy on 11th July 1968, "that this is typical for his generation, that there is no work they carry out in a reliable way, which is the school’s fault, i.e. the old regime’s fault. I expressed a hope that times will come when nobody will employ such people. At that moment, my wife came home from work. She got angry that I was yelling again and she took my son’s side. She said I speak to the nation but I will never get anyone to repair our water pipes. I somehow finished counting the words. The number I reached was 2032 and I just left it like that."
The following day Prof. Brod asked Vaculík to add something. Vaculík was however meant to shorten the text. He finally did it in the noise and chaos of the editor’s office. This is how the final version of the manifesto "Two Thousand Words" came into existence.
The manifesto was finished on 11th June 1968 and the scientists immediately launched the signing procedure. Within two weeks, the document was signed by 70 respected personalities from prestigious spheres and professions and several representatives of the working class. It was further signed by a number of great scientists headed by Prof. MUDr. Jan Brod, DrSc., but also by such popular people as Jiří Hanzelka, Rudolf Hrušínský, Jaroslav Vojta or the husband and wife Zátopkovi. Later, they were joined by many others.
Ludvík Vaculík wittily commented on contemporary times: "The truth does not win; the truth is just what is left when everything else is wasted! Therefore, there is no reason for national triumph; there is only a reason for new hope." He did not suspect at that time, that not even two months later, the hope would die and a new one would not appear until twenty one years later.
Sources: ludvikvaculik.cz and others
František Sládek