Rusty wheels

At last, at last, I'm writing again. I came back from the holiday and felt like writing; looked at "A Clutch of Pearls" and decided I just don't want to do that at the moment, so went back to the untitled romance. But that was labouring, too. I found I didn't care much about the heroine, and because I was writing in first person, it was very hard to step back and get to know her.
So I decided I needed some inspiration as to how to get into this story better. Since everyone on the Internet is always mentioning Nora Roberts as the queen of modern romance, and since I've never read a word she's written, I went to the library and got out three of her novels, and read them with one eye as a reader and the other as a writer. It was very interesting. She writes fluidly, and the plots hum along in an entertaining though not particularly surprising way, but I found them very hard to put down, just because the characterisation is so good.
a) She writes very good male characters - they behave like men, not women in trousers.
b) she has very vivid secondary characters. I imagine that, if you read a lot of her books, there would be a lot of repetition here - in just 3, I came across two alcoholic junkie abusive mothers, and lots and lots of wise middle-aged women in happy marriages - but they are all skilfully drawn, in a few very apt sentences, to make you feel that they are three-dimensional people, leading lives of their own that the lead characters are overlapping with, rather than walk-on talking heads to move the plot on.
c) she has believable animal characters - her dogs do dog things
d) ditto for children, teenagers
e) her settings are vivid and accurate, as with her minor characters. One of the books I read was set in New Orleans, where we spent 4 days last month, and, reading it with an eye for errors, the only one I could find was that the tourist buggies there are pulled by mules, not horses - which is petty nit-picking on my part, I realise.
f) She does lots of head-hopping. Sometimes within the same chapter, but very often between chapters or sections of a chapter. This means that you get a fuller picture of the story, and I really liked the man's POV sections, when I thought about it. I know lots of other people do this too, but I hadn't sat down and thought about it consciously before.
g) Her sex scenes aren't embarassing.

So I can see why she's so popular, and I hope I can gain from this little exercise. I wrote one scene in the secondary male character's PoV tonight, and it went fine. Writing at all is a bonus, anyway. Let's hope it carries on. I ought to get up early to write, really; I find it hard, late at night, when I'm tired. But during the day, in the school holidays, just isn't feasible. Never mind. If I cared more about it, obviously I'd make more effort to write, so it would be stupid to whine.