I went from the same level as you, struggling with writing N5 characters from memory, to being able to write almost anything that comes to mind within the space of a year. I think this would have been impossible if not for using Skritter, there's just no way I'd have been able to do it efficiently and cover everything I needed (3.1k characters) by using a book and paper. I only used the app to practice my ability to recall characters and write them from memory, though it also has regular SRS functions like Anki for vocabulary recall.
I got vocabulary lists that covered every character and provided at least a few example words for each one and went through them 100 at a time, sometimes for 8 hours a day, 40+ hours a week. This was only about 20k words but as an experiment I also threw in around 3k yojijukugo to see if I could recall the characters just by knowing the reading and meaning, and I think doing this greatly improved my overall ability to recall the correct kanji in typical 2 character compounds, though that's hard to prove as it might have just been my getting better naturally anyway.
There is a downside to this though, it won't really make a difference to your penmanship on paper, not to say it will get worse or anything, it'll just stay the same unless you spend time improving that separately. The other thing is it's only really good for gaining the ability to recall the correct characters, it'll be on you to know a word is 別れる and not 別かれる, it doesn't help with okurigana from my experience. Maybe the Android app can do this, I'm not sure, I've just used the iOS version.
I started at the beginning of 2015 and after a year I'm now happy with my writing ability and just spend 10-20 minutes a day doing reviews that come up. I'd say that this alone puts me above a typical native Japanese in terms of being able to recall characters from memory because I'm being tested every day on the ones I tend to forget while a native might not even know what they have forgotten and what they haven't. The good thing with Skritter is you only pay to add new words so everything learned is always going to be free to maintain.
I got vocabulary lists that covered every character and provided at least a few example words for each one and went through them 100 at a time, sometimes for 8 hours a day, 40+ hours a week. This was only about 20k words but as an experiment I also threw in around 3k yojijukugo to see if I could recall the characters just by knowing the reading and meaning, and I think doing this greatly improved my overall ability to recall the correct kanji in typical 2 character compounds, though that's hard to prove as it might have just been my getting better naturally anyway.
There is a downside to this though, it won't really make a difference to your penmanship on paper, not to say it will get worse or anything, it'll just stay the same unless you spend time improving that separately. The other thing is it's only really good for gaining the ability to recall the correct characters, it'll be on you to know a word is 別れる and not 別かれる, it doesn't help with okurigana from my experience. Maybe the Android app can do this, I'm not sure, I've just used the iOS version.
I started at the beginning of 2015 and after a year I'm now happy with my writing ability and just spend 10-20 minutes a day doing reviews that come up. I'd say that this alone puts me above a typical native Japanese in terms of being able to recall characters from memory because I'm being tested every day on the ones I tend to forget while a native might not even know what they have forgotten and what they haven't. The good thing with Skritter is you only pay to add new words so everything learned is always going to be free to maintain.
Edited: 2016-04-26, 11:40 am