I put off learning to write hiragana and katakana when I originally learned them, then ended up deeply regretting it when I realized I couldnât write anything in my textbook or take physical notes 
. Itâs one area where I wish I hadnât listened to Tofugu and other guides, because I feel like even though it sets you back slightly in the beginning, putting in a little more time there pays off immensely in the long run unless youâre only using the language in extremely limited ways.
With kanji, Iâm still pretty slow at it, but Iâve gotten better with practice! If you want to give it a try, one WK user put together these writing practice sheets you can print off, organized by WK level. I combined all the PDFs into one massive document and have been printing off pages from it as I go. Iâll put on some music and just write kanji for 20-30 minutes or so. I donât practice writing individual kanji more than the 20 times in these worksheets, though of course I get practice writing them in textbook exercises and my notes and such!
If you do start writing, I will warn you, it is very difficult and slow at first. I felt like I was back in elementary school practicing the alphabet on lined paper. Writing simple sentences will take you forever because youâll have to slow down and look up every single kanji, and your handwriting will be clumsy and ugly, and youâll get the proportions really wrong. I started out doing a third of the written exercises for my textbook with just kana (and even this took a while at first because I had to keep consulting stroke order diagrams), then typing a third of the exercises, and only writing the last third with kanji.
But, as is true for most writing, really the only trick is just practicing it enough times. Iâve already massively improved at writing, and I can write the kana pretty easily, and have some of the most common basic kanji memorized. Iâve also gotten decently good at looking at kanji and figuring out the stroke order intuitively, so that saves me time as well.
A lot of people here and elsewhere donât really think writing is a skill worth learning, because many people believe that youâre better off putting that time into other aspects of the language thatâll allow you to progress faster, but I think youâll find some surprising benefits from it. It helps me a lot when I come across an unknown kanji, because I can quickly draw it in the IME pad and 99% of the time it will come up right away for me. It has also helped me get better at deciphering handwritten kanji because I can see how the radicals are being drawn. And it has just given me a greater appreciation for kanji in general, which I think is worthwhile.
If you do print off those worksheets and start going through them, one thing youâll find is that there are a lot of pretty predictable patterns to writing kanji that youâll become more and more familiar with. Certain shapes are almost always drawn with the same order of strokes, and generally you start writing in the upper left corner and then work your way down and then to the right (though not always). Youâll also learn how they tend to be laid out proportionally in a box grid. So you probably donât have to specifically practice every single kanji that you learn, because the vast majority follow predictable patterns that youâll be able to get a handle on pretty easily with some practice.
I recommend starting as soon as possible, if itâs something youâve been putting off! Youâll probably find itâs not quite as intimidating as you thought, though it can be time intensive. But just putting in a little time here and there will go a long way!