So, how do I know which to follow for practice? Additionally, why is native handwritten Japanese so different sometimes? 
I use Basic Kanji 500 and I have some resources I found to practice the kanji taught in GENKI. They look similar to calligraphy with the wider stop lines.
Also, bonus question: where my lefties at? Did you switch to your right hand for Japanese, turn the page or do you struggle in anyway? When I was starting to learn my hiragana a decade ago I used to get ki backwards a lot.
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I am left handed. I made a conscious effort to improve my English writing as an adult. Now, learning another script, I pay attention to the things that I learned from that experience, like following the right stroke directions and orders.
So, I have had pretty good luck with kana and kanji.
I think that the very act of paying attention to details will lead to good results, after a few years of practice.
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I guess you can just write top to bottom and then right to left like it was done traditionally if i recall correctly.
About the different fonts: just like in the Roman alphabet there are different ways to write stuff: like a vs ɑ. Often there is also a stylistic version used by printers and software and a handwritten variant. i know some hiragana examples: きさりこ all have different variants. The same probably holds true for some kanji. However, I assume that in most cases there is only 1 correct stroke order with the rare exception of having two. Knowing the stroke order will help you immensely to read kanji as it is common for people to not have the nicest handwriting and then only the stroke order will enable to to decipher it.
TO maybe get common with some different styles of writing kanji, i can recommend you to install this userscript:
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Thanks guys!
I mostly just tried to follow stroke order. It’s kinda difficult to get the correct brush-stroke flourishes without a brush. Also, everybody writes in English a little differently, too, though I’ve noticed that non-native writers tend to do it a bit more neatly.
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I just follow the animations on Jisho: 記 #kanji - Jisho.org
They look pretty cool in my opinion, and you can see where the handwriting is different from the fonts.
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Exposing yourself to different fonts early is great!
There’s always a quick mental disconnect when I finally see a kanji I’ve learned through Wanikani in a different typeface (or, god forbid, handwriting), so the quicker you can train yourself to get over that hurdle and lower the threshold of differentiation between shapes, the better.
Imagine if you’d limited yourself to only learning the alphabet in one font.
For writing, as others have said, just follow the stroke order. Don’t worry about calligraphic flourishes.
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