Getting Serious About Romance

As many of you may already know, I have been half-heartedly attempting to write a romance novel for several years now.  It's not a huge secret that my guilty pleasure is reading trashy romance novels, and, every time I finish one I think to myself, "gosh, I could do that!"  Sadly, I can never seem to get out of the outlining phase of the writing process.  Is it possible that writing a novel really is harder than it looks??  ha ha.

So, since I'm not really doing anything else meaningful with my life right now, I think it's time that I get serious about writing this novel.  What do y'all think?  My mom thinks it's a good idea, though I don't think she's exactly thrilled about the idea of her daughter writing erotic fiction...  (Mom, I promise I'll send you a redacted copy when it gets published!!)  There are a bunch of books on Amazon about how to write romance novels (even dirty ones!)  Maybe it will help to read through one of those to get me inspired to really get started?  And maybe I should pick out a basic creative writing book as well?  I once attended a creative writing workshop in high school, but I haven't really had any training for it beyond that.

... or maybe I'm talking crazy and I will just continue to fruitlessly outline for another few years before I finally give this up?