For the same reason, ultimately, that any author writes. I'm doing it for me.
First off, it's going to be an Actually Writing Blog. Not a Writing And Anything Else I Think About Blog, though that might be fun; ultimately I fear I'd turn into a total bloxhibitionist and lose any sense of priority or discretion. That would be Bad. Also, this isn't just going to be an Actual Writing Blog, in which I talk about all things writing regardless of whether I'm involved.
It's going to be an Actually Writing Blog. That means that if I post a blog entry, you can rest assured I've actually been writing that day.
Not that I've any illusions that the populace at large cares. (That wasn't a pity-prompt. That was a statement of fact.) I'm not in any way professionally published at this time, so I don't exactly have fans. I have friends and family, but for the most part, when they ask, "How's the writing going," they mainly just want to hear, "Very well, thank you! Got a good fifteen hundred words written today, and popped a new short story in the mail last week!" That's pretty much the extent of it. Sordid, gruesome details about which character did what to whom and how many times I got up from the computer and stared at the light in the fridge are Not, In Fact, Sought. My husband probably wants to hear this stuff, because at the moment he's financing my leap into full-time fiction and would like to know that his sacrifice goeth not in vain. But aside from him and a few precious exceptions, see above.
So why should a slush-stranded writer of short stories with as-yet-unrealized ambitions towards novelism pollute the web with yet another blog about writing?
Because putting myself on stage functions as an effective kick in my lazy ass. Even if the audience is largely imaginary.
I have heard it said that "If you're really a writer, you don't need tricks to get yourself writing every day." The corollary to that is, "If you need to trick yourself into writing, just stop. You're not really a writer anyway." You know what? I call bullshit on that. Writing is a separate skill from discipline; I happen to be more advanced at the former than at the latter. And I hear that for some writers, I mean happily published writers living off advances and royalties and subsidiary rights without undue financial trauma, discipline remains problematic. So if it works, by all means get yourself a bag of tricks and use them mercilessly upon yourself, right?
One such trick is telling the world to expect a blog entry every day, and to expect that I will only blog if I've written. I don't know if anyone'll call me on it. But it's like Natalie Goldberg issuing "see you if you show up" writing date invitations on her friends' answering machines. I'm inviting the online world to a party; on the off-chance that anyone actually attends, I'd better get the confetti and appetizers ready.
Hey, if you're reading this--silly "if", of course you're reading this, I mean, if a writer types on an unvisited web page does it still convey meaning?--if you're reading this, anyway, thanks. I won't let us down.