Can Main Blog Page Loop be moved?

WordPress is going to be in the root directory of my site.

However, I’d like the homepage (or index.php) to be a static welcoming page. The filename shouldn’t change.

The normal blog mainpage loop would be moved to a page called “writing”. That page should do everything index.php normally would do in a typical WordPress blog. The url should be /writing/ — and I’d also like my archives and permalinks to be nested as such: /writing/2005/22/15/blog-post-name/
/writing/archives/
I’ve tried getting this to work with my .htaccess, but I don’t think I’m doing it right, because it doesn’t work right. (I get errors).

I don’t want to just put WordPress inside of /writing/ because I still want to be able to make pages outside of /writing/. I also don’t want to have to use multiple installations (one outside of /writing/ and one inside) if it is not neccessary.

Is this possible?