automatic writing

American  

noun

1. writing performed without apparent intent or conscious control, especially to achieve spontaneity or uncensored expression.

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Etymology

Origin of automatic writing

First recorded in 1880–85

Example Sentences

I’ve been making these minimal newsprint collages for quite a few years now, and I did it mostly for a kind of solitary escape, a form of automatic writing, but with reappropriating visual things.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 28, 2025

But if I just want to get started without any aids, the best way is to use the method of automatic writing.

From Scientific American • Oct. 6, 2023

Because I began writing from this distorted place, the first 5,000 words kind of gushed out; it was almost like automatic writing.

From New York Times • Dec. 2, 2018

She asked everyone to do an exercise in automatic writing.

From The New Yorker • Dec. 26, 2011

Stowe later claimed to have written as if in a trance, similar to the Spiritualists’ automatic writing: “I did not write it … God wrote it … I merely did his dictation.”

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock