Your North Star: Key to Writing Success
How to Cultivate a Purpose-Driven Business for More Sustainable Growth.
I have a love-hate relationship with ants.
Ever since I was a kid they’ve fascinated me.
From sitting with a plastic magnifying glass focusing the sun's light into a death ray (a pastime that thankfully never became a hobby).
To my much less homicidal ant farm with connecting tubs spreading their empire across my room. Or the skin-crawling moment I stuck my hand in the roiling mess of a disturbed nest under the weight of a teenage dare.
You’ve gotta admit, they’re relentless breakers and builders.
Now as a homeowner, I constantly battle the intrepid explorers and tunnellers as they surmount moats, poison, traps, bath tube silicone, and other obstacles to eat my elderly cat’s food or undermine the stability of our poolside paving. Methodically grinding concrete to dust.
They’re unstoppable city-building fungus farmers. You see, love and hate.
They’re actually one of my top three favorite animals, right up there with meerkats and fish eagles. But hot damn, they’re destructive. It’s because, like that magnifying glass earlier, what they have is focus and determination.
They have a goal and single-mindedly tunnel towards it.
All are orchestrated by a single high-level directive.
More food!
More tunnels!
And in my own writing journey, I've had anything but that.
My business meanders and loses focus spreading my effort across multiple mini-projects, which are exciting and potentially amazing, but end up more like a flashlight than a hyper-focused laser. Gently wasting my energy with very little impact.
At least I’ll create some light as I burn out.
This got me thinking, I need that kind of ant-like focus. I need a high-level guiding principle or a singularly focused vision.
I need a North Star.
I’ve seen them in massive corporate transformation projects, the kind with billions at stake and scores of consultants scurrying around burning through budgets.
And I believe they could work for one-personal fiction businesses like we’re trying to build. Because creative minds head in multiple directions, with ideas coming out of our ears, we need them just like teams need a focal point.
This quote really drives it home for me.
Your results are the product
of either personal focus
or personal distraction.
The choice is yours.— John Di lemme
Because that’s what a North Star is
A single strategic statement that
encapsulates values, vision, and mission
to help focus a company’s efforts
toward one infinite goal.
Here are some examples:
Tesla: To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.
Amazon: To be Earth's most customer-centric company.
Apple: To create products that enrich people's lives.
TRE: To empower your one-person storytelling empire.
Yup, I snuck mine in there at at the end.
Navigating the path to success requires having this type of guiding light.
To know where you’re headed and why.
To know what to do and what to cut.
To build focus and priority in your systems.
Ready to work out your own?
Let’s dive in!
A Guiding Vision and Metric
A North Star is essentially a guiding principle.
It comprises two main elements: a clear and inspiring vision, and a measurable, actionable metric representing progress towards that vision.
Your North Star should align with your core mission and values, helping you to stay focused on what truly matters and avoid distractions.
Google's North Star
Is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", with user engagement as their metric.
Creating and Using Your North Star
Step 1: Define Your Vision
Begin by determining the long-term vision for your fiction writing business.
What impact do you want to have on readers, and what values will you incorporate into your work? This inspirational vision statement should provide a clear direction for your fiction writing journey.
Simply put, what matters most to you?
Step 2: Identify Your North Star Metric
Choose a measurable and actionable metric that signifies progress toward your vision.
For a sustainable subscription-based business, your North Star metric could be the number of subscribers, overall revenue growth, or the number of close reader relationships you build.
For a writer not even thinking about the business yet, you could aim for increased consistency then number of chapters you write and publish is great.
Choose something that balances inspiration with what is in your power to achieve.
Telsa chooses “To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.” because they’re in the electric car business and can meaningfully do that themselves or inspire it in other companies by threatening their position.
Either way, they win.
Step 3: Align Your Strategy
Your North Star metric should influence your strategy and decision-making, ensuring everything you do moves you toward your vision.
If your metric is subscriber count, prioritize creating high-quality content, promoting your subscription service, and providing excellent customer service.
Step 4: Develop an Action Plan
Create a detailed plan outlining the steps necessary to reach your North Star metric.
This could involve designing a content calendar, crafting a marketing strategy, or establishing customer support processes.
Step 5: Measure Progress and Iterate
Regularly track your progress and use data and feedback to identify areas for improvement.
Adjust your strategy and action plan as needed, maintaining a steady course toward your North Star.
Your North Star Guided Journey
By developing a robust North Star to guide your strategy and focus, you create a clear direction for your business.
As you come to forks in the road, choices you have to make, you ask yourself:
“Does this move me close toward my North Star?
Or is it a distraction that moves me away?”
Staying aligned with your long-term goals leads to smarter, more time-efficient decision-making and ultimately the realization of your fiction writing dreams.
The power of a North Star is helping you say “No.”
And saying “No” to what distracts helps you enjoy the journey to a successful one-person business a lot more! Burnout and myriad incomplete projects all come from a lack of clear focus. That’s the value of a North Star.
Sold? Ok, now let’s make it easy.
5 Min Q&A to Get Your Own North Star
This prompt is a little different from previous ones.
After tons of research and testing, I’ve found multi-step question-and-answer prompts using the free ChatGPT to be the easiest and most interactive format.
This format should also allow most of my readers to try it out at no cost.
While being guided through the process.
I’ve tested this myself for this newsletter and my novel and it worked wonders in getting you thinking about these essential questions.
Just the process of forming thoughts into words helps a ton.
My Test Results
This answer helps me scratch my itch, it’s not necessarily perfect but it’s a good start. Remember, The quality of the result is based on the quality of your answers.
It’s not magic, it’s just a handful of questions designed to nudge your thinking.
The more times you do it the more refined your answers will become and the more you’ll zero in on just what you want, what makes you tick, and how you can help most.
ChatGPT Prompt
Drop this prompt into the ChatGPT and it will ask if you’re ready to start, and then ask you a few questions before sharing:
A single sentence of your North Star
A summary of your North Star answers as a paragraph.
I need some help coming up with my creative writing project's North Star.
I want you to learn about my project's goals, audience and what I plan to do.
We are going to break this into 2 separate steps.
Step 1: First, you will interview me and ask me these questions, one by one, allowing me time to respond to each one before moving on to the next. Once I have provided you the answer, ask me if I am ready for the next question, and so on:
1. What's the ultimate goal or purpose of your business or project? What's the big picture?
2. Who is your target audience for this project?
3. What impact do you want to have on your customers or audience? How do you want to make a difference in their lives?
4. What values do you want to embody in your work? What's important to you and what do you stand for?
5. How will you measure your success for this project?
Ask me if I am ready to begin the interview, and when I agree, ask me each question in sequential order.
We must complete this Step 1 before moving on to Step 2.
Once I have answered the above questions, we will move on to Step 2 where you will create a North Star singular statements and summary paragaph for the my writing project or business based on the answers I provided you in Step 1.
See this examples for reference:
Example Singular Statements:
1. Tesla: To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.
2. Amazon: To be Earth's most customer-centric company.
3. Apple: To create products that enrich people's lives.
Example Summary Paragraph:
The North Star for Tesla is creating a better future for the planet by making sustainable energy accessible and affordable for everyone. This drive to create eco-friendly transportation and renewable energy sources has led the company to develop products like cutting-edge electric vehicles, solar panels, and energy storage systems.
Do you understand? If so, let’s begin with Step 1 and ask me if I am ready to begin the interview—and then ask me the questions, one by one, allowing me time to respond to each one before moving on to the next.
I hope that helped you zero in on your own North Star. Let me know how you fared, the more you tell me how it went for you, the easier I can make these prompts.
North Stars and Hero’s Journeys
Today my wife and I celebrated our 21st anniversary of being together.
We met in high school and have been together ever since. And we like doing simple adventurous things to celebrate the day. But it’s cold and wet here today so we were a little hamstrung for outdoor things to do. We decided to try an indie movie theatre and watch something a little different.
We chose the exquisite movie, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
It’s a beautiful story of an elderly man’s simple journey from the south of England to the north to save his dying friend. I won’t say any more for fear of spoiling a simple and subtle story of personal redemption.
As I sat there, moved to tears at times, it struck me that it was such a serendipitous and profound example of a North Star.
Harold had a mission, a goal, and a vision, based on his values.
To save his friend, Queenie, to not let her down, to give her hope and faith because he’d let her down before and he wouldn’t do it again.
So track down the movie, give it a watch and perhaps that will give you a far clear idea that this meandering article.
Until next week, happy writing!
Zane
PS - Next week, we’ll look into how we can use this same concept perhaps a little differently within a novel.
Please share the Reader Experience with a few friends, it’s the best no-cost way for you to support this newsletter. 💜
A quick followup question
Last week I polled TRE readers and my Twitter audience and the combined votes point to you wanting to learn how to write faster.
I’m curious though, what’s the number 1 thing slowing down your writing?
If your specific problem isn’t there then:
Hit reply on this email if you want to DM me.
Or click the comment button below to share with the community.
I think it’s a multifaceted problem and getting to know the reasons “why” will make all the difference in working out how we can speed up your writing.
This is brilliant, thank you for sharing. I have given it a go and it's made very clear what I've been trying to refine. I have saved my North Star statement, tweaked it a little and will refer back to it regularly. Thank you.
Here is my statement from ChatGPT - thank you so much for helping me with this, Zane. I think it's perfect!
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. We have completed Step 1 of the interview. Now, let's move on to Step 2 where I will create a North Star singular statement and a summary paragraph for your writing project or business based on the answers you provided.
Based on your answers, here is your North Star singular statement:
"To ignite imagination, inspire joy, and provoke thought through captivating stories that leave a lasting impact on readers of all ages."
And here is the summary paragraph for your writing project:
The North Star for your writing project is to cultivate imagination in others by writing in a similar style to imaginative authors that spark imagination in you. Your target audience primarily consists of adults, but may include young adults and children. Your goal is to make a difference in their lives by providing enjoyable stories that leave them with a sense of increased imagination, fun, and play, while also provoking thought. Your work embodies values of honesty, faithfulness, integrity, successful relationships, unconditional love, peacefulness, joyfulness, and happiness. You measure success through your personal enjoyment of writing and the feedback and comments from readers about the impact your stories have on them.
Please let me know if this accurately reflects your vision and goals for your writing project.