I've successfully resisted the urge to start a blog for many years now, when it seemed like everyone with anything (often nothing) to say has been chronicling every trivial detail of their existence. I mean, why would anyone care what happened to a mostly boring guy like me on a day-by-day basis? Well, most normal people wouldn't, and they're not reading this now, so what's up with the two or three of you others who are reading?

But my website needs something new on a regular basis, to give folks an excuse to come back, and the Graffiti Page is getting a bit stale after four years of daily entries. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of joke-a-day sites where you can get the same sort of fluff, so perhaps it's time to put that feature out to pasture and try something else.

There's another, more important reason. Last year was a fairly slow year for my writing [career/hobby/addiction?], and I could use something to get back on track and kick things into a higher orbit. I'm not currently in a writing group, but one of the benefits I always got from those groups was the sort of self-imposed deadlines they gave me ("Gotta have this next story ready for the meeting on Thursday. . . ."). [By the way, if you know of any good non-beginner groups looking for new members, I might be interested.] I know it's not exactly the same, but I figure by chronicling my writing activities here, I am in some minor way giving myself some arbitrary deadlines and forcing myself to write. Not the blog, but my fiction writing, I mean. If I tell you all that I have an idea for a science fiction story, it sort of behooves me to follow through and write the damned thing if a bunch of you are watching over my shoulder, doesn't it?

So, you see, I'm not doing this because of any exhibitionist tendencies or some overpowering need to share. It's actually a bit selfish -- just a little self-motivational tool you can all join in on. Or not. If nobody's reading, I can still pretend.

Do I worry that I'll spend too much time on the blog, at the expense of my fiction writing? Absolutely. Making time for my writing has always been a problem. So, for now, until I get into a bit of a rhythm, I've got a cheap kitchen timer on my desk, and will set it to 30 minutes whenever I sit down to work (if this is really work) on the blog. When the timer goes off, it's time to switch hats and get moving on my fiction. The blog will be my warm-up exercise. Goodbye Solitaire, Free Cell and Minesweeper!

I'm not sure where this thing will go. Perhaps that's a subject for another blog entry, but my time is running short. If you become a regular reader, we'll find out together. Gotta go. The egg timer just dinged.

PS: Yes, you unbelieving readers of the Chronicles of the Garden Variety Writers, this is a real blog, at least in the sense that I have not plotted out any fictional happenings . . . but, you know, I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'll try to keep it lively.