Practice practice
I started practicing today and decided that I need to find some of the Chinese/Japanese practice writing paper. They have large grids which you can use to accurately size things. I can’t even consistently size the basic strokes, there’s no way I’ll be able to combine the characters and have them be sized appropriately for a while.
I also realized that the strokes are much easier to make when I stop thinking about them so much. I need to just let the pen “go” at a much faster pace, rather than concentrating on every single stroke. The strokes come out nicer.
I’m stil doing the first two strokes so far, but I may try the third. It’s rather difficult for me to get the hang of “suspended needle” form of shu4 (豎). I’m just not used to having to slowly lift the pen as I finish a stroke.
Even the simple act of having to type in the names of the things I’m practicing requires me to do quite a bit of character recognition. That’s more practice right there.