Automatic Writing

Better than any spontaneous description I could give, here's a quote from the pocket-sized book, Surrealist Games(Alastair Brotchie, Redstone Press):


    Automatic writing is the most direct of Surrealist techniques.

    Sit at a table with pen and paper; put yourself in a 'receptive' frame of mind, and start writing. Continue writing without thinking of what is appearing beneath your pen. Write as fast as you can. If, for some reason, the flow stops, leave a space and immediately begin again by writing down the first letter of the next sentence. Choose this letter at random before you begin, for instance, a 't', and always begin this new sentence with a 't'.

    Although in the purest version of automatism nothing is 'corrected' or re-written the unexpected material produced by this method can be used as the basis for further composition. What is crucial is the un-premediatied free-association that creates the basic text.


It is this production of 'unexpected material' that serves itself as much as it serves as a basis for further 'Surrealistic' manipulation and interpretation, in the relm of the literary, the graphic, the erotic, the expulsatory, &c..

One Example

An ongoing example (The World's First Collaborative Sentence).
The Exquisite Sonnet Project, run by Ranjit Bhatnagar

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