hey i've been studying off and on for a several years now. when i first began learning, our class had these workbooks that were a lot of help. basically all it was a big picture of the character and stroke order, then a bunch of little squares with the first three or so showing a faded out version of the character to trace over, then empty squares to continue writing the character in. i can't emphasize how important it is for memory to either know the stroke order, or develop a consistent pattern of writing it for yourself. after that, it's mostly going to be a lot of repetition to get your hand familiar with the movements and your brain familiar with the layout. the boxes are very useful for keeping your characters the right size, so the bottom of 忘 and the character 心 don't end up being the same size. any graph paper with big enough boxes would do fine, but that's all of less importance than remembering (i still write on notebook paper and although the horizontal lines keep me somewhat in check, without any vertical lines i tend to make a lot of characters that are really fat or tall and skinny）. it's definitely good to see how many you're able to remember in a day and set some goals and try to stick to them. of course, if you can't remember a word for the previous day, keep recycling it within the batch of new words until you feel comfortable with it. studying for at least 20 minute sessions or so 2-3 times a day, is a schedule i found to be very useful. after i got a grip on the language and felt more comfortable studying, i found what's worked the best for me to really learn a word or single character is to get some index cards and： 1. write the character(s) on the front 2. write the pinyin on the other side at the very top 3. write the meaning on the other side at the very bottom making the cards alone is useful, as i often concentrate on saying the pronunciation in my head while thinking of the meaning as i'm writing the character. then thinking of the other two elements while writing the pinyin and then the definition. i then go through the full stack of cards 3 separate times, each new round starting from a different piece of the card (i.e. read the meaning while the previous card covers the pinyin, then test myself on the pronunciation and writing of it, next round read the pinyin covering the meaning etc.) after you've played around with this for a while you get a feel for how many new words you can handle in a day. i find that they stick in my head best if i study right before i go to sleep, and then test myself in the morning if i have time. whenever you study though, make sure you get enough sleep otherwise nothing will stick. the writing definitely, definitely, does get easier with time, as you get more comfortable with the different strokes and pieces that make up so many different characters. i still remember very clearly a point where everything just clicked, and i was pretty comfortable with any new character after that point. it's amassing that familiarity with the many parts that takes a bit of time to really find a foothold for, and just beginning to learn is definitely the hardest part! don't give up and you'll do fine.