Ever wish you could hit pause on the day and just breathe for a minute? This special episode of The Modern Editor Podcast is your invitation to do exactly that—with a whispered twist. I’m exploring ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) for the very first time, combining soothing sounds with editing insights for a brief but blissful moment of calm. And yes, I’m whispering this entire episode thanks to a timely cold that made my voice unexpectedly ASMR-ready. I’m personally a big fan of ASMR and have always wanted to try my hand at it, so I thought it would be fun to do an entire ASMR episode. I am by no means an ASMR artist, but I love watching and listening to ASMR to help me relax.
Ever wish you could hit pause on the day and just breathe for a minute? This special episode of The Modern Editor Podcast is your invitation to do exactly that—with a whispered twist.
I’m exploring ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) for the very first time, combining soothing sounds with editing insights for a brief but blissful moment of calm. And yes, I’m whispering this entire episode thanks to a timely cold that made my voice unexpectedly ASMR-ready.
I’m personally a big fan of ASMR and have always wanted to try my hand at it, so I thought it would be fun to do an entire ASMR episode. I am by no means an ASMR artist, but I love watching and listening to ASMR to help me relax.
Important Sections:
ASMR Artists I Recommend:
Hello, and welcome to today's episode. I think you can probably tell already that this is going to be a different type of episode than what you're used to on The Modern Editor Podcast. I'm gonna be doing a special ASMR episode for you today. Now, I don't fancy myself a professional ASMR artist by any stretch, but I've always wanted to try it because I love listening to and watching ASMR, and I figured why not share that little few minutes or pocket of joy and relaxation with others, right?
And it worked out perfectly because I currently have a cold or some sort of bug and I sound terribly nasally, but I think the whispering helps mask that. So win-win. And meeting yourself where you're at and still doing the thing, even if it looks different, right?
So if you're wondering what ASMR is, ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response.” So if you've ever felt a tingling sensation when someone brushes your hair or scratches your skin, or if you do that to yourself or if you hear a particular sound, that's ASMR. Now, I get tingles sometimes depending on what I'm listening to, but a lot of the times that I listen to ASMR, I do it just because I find it very soothing and relaxing, and I need to relax a lot.
I will be sharing my favorite ASMR artists in the show notes in case you wanna look up other ASMR artists and sort of explore that whole wide world out there.
So what I'll be doing today is using different props and making different sounds, or triggers as they're called in the ASMR world. Just a heads-up, I do not like mouth sounds. So anything like chewing gum or food or clicking my tongue or anything like that. I don't like those triggers, so I will not be doing anything like that today.
I'm going to be whispering, obviously, tapping on certain things, turning pages in a notebook, typing, things like that. So, of course, if you don't like the sound of something, please feel free to skip ahead or just stop listening. Either way.
All right, so let's settle in and begin. The first thing I'm going to do, and I invite you to join me, is to take two deep breaths.
One more time.
All right. The first trigger I'm going to do and I have been doing is whispering, but I'm going to be whispering some definitions for you that I took out of my short workbook I created for the Freelance Editors Club. So the first one is “CMOS,” C-M-O-S. And that stands for The Chicago Manual of Style. It's the most commonly used style guide in the US and is the standard for book publishing.
The next definition is for the word “flag.” Flag is an editing term that refers to pointing something out to the author within a piece of content. This can be in the form of highlighted text or a comment bubble in something like Track Changes or Google Docs.
“House style” refers to a company's documentation that dictates its standards and preferences for its content. It can include things like preferred spellings, punctuation, and capitalization rules, font choices, and formatting styles. It can also be called a “house style guide” or simply “style guide.”
The next word is “stet.” Stet means let it stand. Editors use this term if they've left something as is, or if they’d like the author to leave something as is.
And the final term is “style sheet,” which is a document of standards for a particular book or project. Copyeditors create the style sheet that is then used by proofreaders and formatters. Style sheets can include preferences for grammar usage, spelling, punctuation, and numbers. They can also include proper nouns used in the work, a character list, and a timeline.
Now I am going to use my keyboard as the next trigger to type a book club discussion post that I need to make in the Freelance Editors Club community. Now I have a very clicky-clacky keyboard, which I love because I just love the sound, and I hope you do too. So I'm going to simply type for a little bit.
All right. The next trigger that I have is this fun little slug toy that I bought on vacation a few years ago after I saw it in another ASMR video, and I saw it in the gift shop and immediately needed to have it. It has absolutely nothing to do with editing, but I love the sound. I love it so much that I just had to share it here. So here's my little slug fidget toy.
I could play with that toy all day, but I will move on to the last trigger, and that is turning pages in my notebook. This is another favorite ASMR sound of mine. And I really miss hearing this sound when I read ebooks, because there's just nothing better than the sound of a crisp book or notebook or journal page and turning that page, which is why I will always prefer physical books over ebooks. So enjoy some notebook page-turning.
All right. Let's take one deep breath together before we end the episode.
Thank you so much for joining me for this very different episode and allowing me to explore something a little more creative and a little more out there from my usual content. I appreciate you taking the time to support me and my obsession with ASMR.
I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about the episode. Are you an ASMR enthusiast? Are you going to look more into ASMR? Would you like me to do more ASMR? Feel free to send me an email with your thoughts at Hello@TaraWhitaker.com.
And feel free to tune back into this episode whenever you need a quick reset or need a few minutes to relax. It's amazing how much a few minutes can make a difference.
So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember that anything that helps you take care of yourself is valid.