Right, it does come out looking like you are writing "nummumnmn" or something like that, over and over again.

The book I have used has been that Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian Script. It did the trick, but the lessons on cursive all looked like they had been written by a child. But that seems to be quite typical of the examples I have seen. Don't get me wrong -- well executed Cyrillic looks wonderful, it's probably just that in the west we are used to seeing either printed handwritting or, less common, a stylish, individual handwriting.

The fact that Cyrillic has to be so precise (e.g., those little loops), probably means that I subconciously associate it learing it with my first (hopeless) childhood attempts at "joined up writing" (which had to be learned to prepare for "big school"). I am fairly confident that this does not mean that Russia is a nation of millions of people in short trousers, sitting at a desk too big for them, awkardly holding a pen, writing really slowly with their tounge suck out in concentration.