If there's a recurring theme to my ramblings here it is I hope this: don't get taken in by the idea writing is about the cerebral stuff stuff alone. It's actually a job, a craft, a trade.  Work in other words. Nose to the grindstone stuff. Taking the pit pony to the coal face.

Writers are all too often portrayed as dreamers staring into the distance like our old chum Dante Alighieri here, musing away on a hill side. But consider this: Dante was a trained pharmacist, a diplomat, a politician, a soldier. He read obsessively, in Italian and Latin, as you can tell from the obscure and scattergun references in his masterwork, <em>The Divine Comedy.</em> Would he recognise this picture of an aesthete whiling away a sunny afternoon with his head in the clouds?

No. We all need thinking time. But without <em>doing</em> time it means nothing. Dante was too damned busy to spend much of his life like this. <em>Busy</em>. A good word, a great word to describe what makes wannabe writers into actual ones. Here's another: routine. You need one. Without it your output will be pathetic. And given that most people have to write five books in order to get one half decent one, pathetic output pretty much, although not always, spells career death, probably before you've even embarked on a career.

Here is what routine means for me.

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For almost the first ten years of my writing career I did two jobs: as a journalist for the <em>Sunday Times</em> 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 damned hard work involving seven day weeks, few holidays (and when they came along invariably interrupted by work) and constant graft. 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 get a penny of income so best make sure there's plenty of money in the bank. Let's assume you're like most writers and start your novel alongside the day job. How?

We're back to that 'routine' word again. You need one. You need to stick to it. You need to work, probably harder than you've ever worked in your life. And the likelihood is still that you're going to fail one way or another. But if you came into this game for fame, riches and instant success you deserve to fail anyway.

My routine 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. It also, after a while, resulted in a contract with the <em>Sunday Times</em> which meant I could rely on guaranteed income each month in return for a guaranteed amount of work. If you're going into this game self-employed in another field I highly recommend you seek some similar solution. You may make more money by being a buccaneer, chasing every individual contract that's out there. But that will eat into your time, and time is the most precious resource of all.

Once I got into that position the division between fiction and journalism almost defined itself. When it comes to fiction I work best in the mornings. That's when the creative side of me is at its best. 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. It seems to be axiomatic in the modern writing business that there is no longer any easy way to divide work time from leisure. You can fight it by taking the dog for a walk or something -- which is a good idea anyway. But the plain truth is you will still find yourself nagged by things to say, ideas to get down, notions to communicate at odd hours (which is why I am writing this at 0839 on a Saturday morning before going shopping).

What's important is to accept 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 -- not Facebook or Twitter or faffing around the Internet -- 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 (which may or may not involve actual writing, though that's a different subject). Anything that drags you away from that necessity is the enemy, a monster to be avoided, the black beast of despair that can leave you a wannabe author forever.

Routine is essential even, perhaps especially, when you become a full-time writer. My distractions are different these days -- emails from readers, events, promotions, interviews and the necessary task of communicating through the web in places like this. They need to be contained, pushed always into parts of the day when I would never be writing on the book. So here's my routine, Monday to Friday, around 7.30 am to around 5.30 pm when I knock off.

First hour of the day: deal with overnight email, read newspapers, check Twitter and Facebook, post any items I feel like. If something grabs me in the news I'll put it up somewhere. If I feel a burning urge to write a blog post it will happen then <em>and always be done by 8.45 at the latest or left unfinished for another day.</em>

Around eight thirty till twelve thirty. First, read anything I wrote the day before, revise it, try to cut what's not needed and add in anything that should have been there that wasn't. This will usually take me to ten a.m. Break for a coffee briefly. Come back and write, maybe a few hundred words, maybe more, until I feel the day's writing has taken hold to the extent I know where it's headed. Take dog for a twenty minute walk around eleven then back to work. Around 12.30 break for lunch till two.

Afternoon: two till 5.30 or six. Email again, Facebook and Twitter again. <em>Nothing substantial is written during this period except the book.</em> Carry on writing. Hope to hit two thousand words. Pleased if it gets to three thousand, which it does maybe one time in five. Always pack in at three thousand. Always end on a scene conclusion, not mid-scene if possible. I hate picking up unfinished threads the following day. At six, knock off and do nothing more on the book though I will come and check emails in the evening (since they come in from all places and time zones).

Weekends: be a normal human being mostly, but do the maintenance stuff, filing, web sites, any boring work.

And that's it. Doesn’t change much any more because, well, it works. This is my routine. Yours will be different. The challenge is finding it then sticking to it (and when you find the right one it's not hard to stick to, honest). The point about routine is this: once you find it you no longer think 'Shall I write?' You just do because that's the time of day when writing happens. It takes away the conscious decision to work or not, and if you're fundamentally lazy as I am that’s a wonderful thing.

Did Dante have a routine? You bet. Just wish I knew what it was.