I've been working on writing myself, lately. For me, the challenge isn't so much the kanji themselves as it is putting sentences together quickly, so I guess I'm having the exact opposite problem that you are.
Anyway, I've been working with my tutor on writing. She writes down each kanji stroke by stroke in my notebook; I practice them a few times over the two weeks in between our sessions (to be honest, I usually do this over the weekend before...) then I'm tested on them via a worksheet with words in hiragana for which I need to produce the kanji.
Beyond that, I've been tasked with writing short papers; they started with simple diary entries, but after a couple of those (over a month, maybe) she asked me to write an essay. We go over them and make corrections (they've needed surprisingly few, which means I'm either doing better than I thought or writing way too simply).
Personally, I type them on the computer, then copy them by hand (because I make too many corrections, even in English, which doesn't go well with writing).
I've been taking things really slowly (currently, I've only gone over about 100 kanji this way, though I'll double that soon), but it really hasn't taken too much effort to do, since I can already read them. Since you and I already associate kanji with our words in the reading direction, it's much easier to learn to write words with kanji, you just need to learn how to write the kanji and then write words with it.
I think it's reasonable to complete in a year, though it might be easier to manage with Anki.
I think the most important aspects of the methods described above are the following:
- Clear reinforcement of stroke order (tracing them helps a lot more than copying, in my opinion)
- Practicing writing in and out of context (practice writing kanji, then practice writing papers with kanji)
- Testing the writing of kanji in context (in words instead of by themselves; even if those words are single kanji like 本, test it with ほん; add context as necessary, like by testing phrases instead of words)
Anyway, I've been working with my tutor on writing. She writes down each kanji stroke by stroke in my notebook; I practice them a few times over the two weeks in between our sessions (to be honest, I usually do this over the weekend before...) then I'm tested on them via a worksheet with words in hiragana for which I need to produce the kanji.
Beyond that, I've been tasked with writing short papers; they started with simple diary entries, but after a couple of those (over a month, maybe) she asked me to write an essay. We go over them and make corrections (they've needed surprisingly few, which means I'm either doing better than I thought or writing way too simply).
Personally, I type them on the computer, then copy them by hand (because I make too many corrections, even in English, which doesn't go well with writing).
I've been taking things really slowly (currently, I've only gone over about 100 kanji this way, though I'll double that soon), but it really hasn't taken too much effort to do, since I can already read them. Since you and I already associate kanji with our words in the reading direction, it's much easier to learn to write words with kanji, you just need to learn how to write the kanji and then write words with it.
I think it's reasonable to complete in a year, though it might be easier to manage with Anki.
I think the most important aspects of the methods described above are the following:
- Clear reinforcement of stroke order (tracing them helps a lot more than copying, in my opinion)
- Practicing writing in and out of context (practice writing kanji, then practice writing papers with kanji)
- Testing the writing of kanji in context (in words instead of by themselves; even if those words are single kanji like 本, test it with ほん; add context as necessary, like by testing phrases instead of words)