Robert Louis Stevenson was a remarkable man. Not only did he produce some wonderful books but he was allowed a degree of freedom few of us can enjoy today. Stevenson wrote a children’s adventure classic Treasure Island and the dark gothic horror of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He penned the historical novel Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae, a kind of international revenge blockbuster with locations ranging from the Scotland of the Jacobite Rising to America and India. There was plenty of journalism and travel too, all in a mere forty four years of a life blighted by sickness.

No one ever said to Stevenson, ‘Stick to what you know, dear boy.You can be a kids’ writer, a teller of adventure tales, a master of horror, or the forerunner of the Clavells and Archers of the century to come. But you can’t be them all.’

He was lucky. Very few authors will find themselves so fortunate today. We live in the era of genre, of intense and rigid classification. In the 1960s, when I was a teenager browsing the shelves of the library in the small town where I grew up, already imagining where a book bearing my name would end up on the shelf, titles were divided into the most basic of categories.

One part of the library was for fiction, one for non-fiction. The only sub-division in fiction might be an area where the sci-fi titles were kept, usually in the tell-tale yellow jackets of Gollancz. Everything else – from Mary Renault to Henry James, from Raymond Chandler to Somerset Maugham – was arranged alphabetically on the same shelves.

I grew up reading books of all kinds, not a set selection relegated to a genre, a pre-defined classification of the rich and sprawling world of literature that someone had kindly sifted and sorted beforehand. Like Stevenson. I was lucky too.

Today most popular fiction comes with a label attached. Crime, young adult, thriller, mystery, history, chick-lit, science fiction, fantasy, romance, romantasy… These interbreed so we also have chick-lit mysteries and historical crime. Then there are the sub-genres such as noir, steampunk, gothic, hardboiled, legal, police-procedural, speculative and alternative history.

Some of these terms have geographical limitations. American readers are always surprised to learn that the word ‘mystery’ means precious little to their counterparts in the UK. The US term ‘cozy’ – used for a crime novel that avoids nastiness such as overt violence, sex and bad language while still managing to kill people somewhere along the way – used to be equally foreign to most readers outside America, though the kind of book it describes is universally popular. But both are gaining currency in the UK now too.

Rail against the rise of the genres as much as you like, but you would be foolish to ignore it. One way or another your book will probably be defined as belonging to one of these categories, even if only tentatively. Accept that fact and start to understand how best to use it. You’ll stand a much better chance selling your work as ‘upmarket crime’ than as ‘general fiction that happens to involve a murder’.

I once heard a fellow author say out loud at a book event that a daily bout of writing is essential for anyone who wants to be an author, as if it were jogging or some other muscular exercise.

If it works for you, fine. It doesn’t work for me. Not only do I not have to write every day I deliberately avoid doing so. This is a job, one I do five days a week, Monday to Friday, from around eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. Weekends are for other things. I need a break from the book. I want to go back to it on Monday morning feeling fresh and enthusiastic.

That’s not to say I don’t think about the manuscript at weekends, or do some other work then. Research, scribbling down ideas, reading. But not writing. The Monday to Friday thing is a habit I’ve got into over the years, and I happen to think that habits, when it comes to work, are very good ideas.

Here’s how I discovered that.

For the first ten years of my writing career I did two jobs – as a journalist for the Sunday Times and as a writer trying to produce one book a year. This isn’t a situation I’d ever want to go back to. It was hard work, involving long hours, seven-day weeks and few holidays. But I had no choice. Writing novels didn’t pay the bills. It was either two jobs, give up the dream of being an author, or starve.

Most people will try to start off this way. You’d have to be pretty brave or foolish to abandon the day job and declare to the world you’re going to be a writer. Even if it works, you’re probably looking at a couple of years before you see much income, so best make sure there’s plenty of money in the bank.

Let’s assume you have to start your novel alongside another career. How do you make both work? You need a habit, a routine and you need to stick to it. Mine worked like this. I angled my way into freelance journalism after a staff career on national newspapers. Freelancing meant I controlled my time, not someone else. After a while it resulted in a contract with the Sunday Times which meant I could rely on guaranteed income each month in return for a guaranteed amount of work.

Once I got into that position the division between books and journalism almost defined itself. With fiction, I soon discovered I work best in the mornings. That’s when the creative side of me is most alive. So I gave over mornings to the novels. In the afternoons I worked on journalism. Five days a week. Seven when necessary. It was difficult at first. After a while it became second nature. And eventually the books became sufficiently popular that I could put journalism behind me for good.

It’s important to integrate the job – or chore if you like – of writing fully into your life. To allow that part of the day or night or both will be given over to working on a novel and nothing is going to get in the way.

We’re surrounded by so many distractions these days it’s easy to lose sight of priorities. For the writer there’s only one: keeping the work in progress alive and kicking, and growing organically a little each week. Anything that drags you away from that necessity is the enemy, a pitfall that can leave you a wannabe author for ever.

My distractions are different these days – emails from readers, events, promotions, interviews and the necessary task of communicating through the web. But they’re still distractions that need to be contained, pushed always into parts of the day when I would never be writing on the book.

Why are routines so essential? Simple. Because once you find the one that works, you no longer have to ask yourself, ‘Shall I write?’ You do it because that’s the time of day you devote to your novel.

Routines take away the conscious decision to hit the keyboard or not. If you’re as fundamentally lazy as I am, that’s a wonderful thing.

Any book is a massive undertaking requiring commitment, skill, determination and an extraordinary amount of perspiration. Most people with half a feel for language and fiction can write a thousand words or so to kick off a story. Many can make it to some kind of mid-point. A few get to the end, and a small number of those few will manage to do so with sufficient dexterity to attract the attention of a publisher and see the fruits of their imagination reach, finally, the pages of a finished book.

And here’s the truth. Of those only a handful will still be seeing their work published a decade or more after their debut and truly lay claim to the title ‘professional author’. Publishing is a tough business.

Is it talent that separates the career writer from the amateur? Up to a point. But attitude, energy and resolve matter as well. Creating a book may appear a solitary, cerebral activity from the outside. Beneath the surface it’s a vibrant, exciting and immensely ambitious exercise, one that demands those traits of an author too. Successful writers don’t sit down to start something. They set out intent on finishing it. You need to find the same enthusiastic doggedness in yourself.

Like the books they write, authors are a heterogeneous mix, some private, some extrovert, some deeply ingrained in academia, a few (this one, for example) with scarcely an educational qualification to their name. They do, however, tend to share some similar personal characteristics.

Here are a few.

Some, you will note, are contradictory, but this is a profession of eternal paradoxes. Most of us write our first book with little if any support or clear idea of what we’re doing. Even established authors are, for the most part, lone operators, dependent on their own imagination for their ideas. You need to be able to analyse the problems you meet and find solutions without much in the way of outside help. Even when you have an agent and publisher you will find it’s not their job to fix your career beyond advice and guidance. No one can write that book but you. If you’re the kind of person who can’t start work until you see the boss casting his beady eye in your direction something has to change.

Focused

Writing requires intense concentration often to the exclusion of matters that, seen from the viewpoint of a non-writer, may appear more important. You could find yourself forced to write on planes and trains to keep up your work rate or locked in a room in your home with the sound of children in the next room and the noise of traffic outside. You will have to accustom yourself to devoting your leisure hours at the computer to work, not browsing the wastelands of social media. This is a vocation for the single-minded and the obsessive.

Industrious

A novel may involve 150,000 words of raw text or more, research, editing, revision, liaison with editors, the occasionally fun but always time-consuming round of marketing and events. If you want to write full-time in mainstream popular fiction you will usually be expected to deliver at least a book a year and risk losing your foothold on the sales slots if you’re late or turn out something unexpected or not up to standard. Anyone looking for a secure and comfy job with long holidays need not apply.

Patient

Finished manuscript to book on sale may take two years or more from the moment a work is bought by a publisher. Add as much as another year to that for the mass-market paperback edition if you first come out in hardback. In translation we’re talking many years more. Should your book be optioned for film or television it may be a decade before you know whether there is any chance of the project being green-lighted into production. Nothing you can do will shorten any of these processes. Accept all this and use the waiting time wisely. There is no better way than writing another book.

Open to criticism

First-time author or old pro, your work will be judged by others and usually found wanting in some way. How do you react? Do you throw up your hands in horror and scream, ‘But this is my book, not yours?’ Or do you listen to the wisdom of people who have been in the business for years and have a very clear idea of what does and doesn’t work? Writing involves constant learning. Even with forty or so books under my belt I discover something new with every fresh project. Successful authors pick up more from their mistakes than their successes. Smart ones ask a first-time editor, ‘Tell me how to make this book better, please,’ not, ‘Tell me I’m clever and that you won’t change a word.’

Observant

Books, ultimately, are about people and the universe they inhabit, about the creation of fictional characters who pass as real human beings (even when they’re not) and fictional worlds that are authentic enough to convince the reader they exist. You will never be able to achieve this small miracle unless you have the ability to listen to and try to understand the people around you, and to make notes constantly about what you hear and see and how that might affect your writing.

Thick-skinned

Few of us escape rejection at some stage. Those who go on to be published are often later happy to admit they should be grateful for their early rebuffs. Many books will be ignored by the critics and find little in the way of shelf space in a shop. Occasionally you will be subject to filthy reviews, particularly from the new army of so-called web critics, and rarely achieve much in the way of sales. If you crave instant public adulation or if disappointment dims your ardour, your writing career is likely to be brief and dispiriting.

Realistic

A sensible author understands that they are unlikely to be the next Lee Child or John Grisham, that Spielberg will not option their book, and that bestsellerdom normally takes many years and several books if it happens at all. He or she will be aware that it is an enormous achievement simply to be published, and that every book needs to be regarded as a stepping stone to a brighter future, not some desperate one-shot chance at stardom.

Ambitious

That said, you must always aim high, craving a chance to sell more titles and write better books. If you don’t believe in yourself why should your agent and publisher?

Self-critical

It’s no use trying to convince yourself that everything you write is wonderful. A serious author should be the first to find fault with their work and, whenever possible correct that before passing a manuscript on to an editor. We all write rubbish sometimes. It’s of absolutely no consequence provided we recognise it for the drivel it is and do our best to ensure it’s never inflicted on others.

Is it reasonable to expect a novice to possess all these from the outset? No. You pick them up over the years. But you can prepare yourself for what lies ahead.