I've found that is wayyyy easier to learn a character after I already know the word. I think Chinese is a language that should be learned starting with speaking. (which is how we all learn our mother tongue) If you try learning characters from scratch, you have to learn the character, what it means, its tone, and its pronunciation all at the same time, which is pretty darn hard. If you already know spoken Chinese you just need to associate the character with what you already know and you're good to go. 

Obviously this only works in some situations. If you are in a university class or something and they make you learn them, you don't have time to learn to speak first. In that case do what Chinese students do when they first learn characters, write it down over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And then write it some more. 

But everybody is different, so find what works best for you and stick with it. Whatever stragegy you use, learning characters just boils down to a lot of hard work and repitition. 

I dont know how either but they wanted me to write many words while I was child. One words many times then make sentences

then write diary and compositions.

Nowadays, we use pc to type chinese. Many people also feel themslefe have troubles to write. Maybe only feel it now but dont know how is it in future

I think it might help to learn radicals as well. Then you can paint picture stories for each word - or at least the basic words so you can understand the main idea of the text.

Also, it' actually okay to not understand everything in a sentence - all you have to do is to understand the approximate meaning to make sense of the context, and I'm sure that the understanding will come later! 

Do do you have a sample text that you're reading that you're having difficulty with? Maybe you can share it? And I can help you with it? :) 

Good luck! 

I concur with 王肥.  I can speak Mandarin and understand it even better than I speak it, but I found that the only characters that stuck in memory are those that I use regularly. Brute force memorization doesn't work very well. 

I'm interested in how others have used Skritter successfully. I can't find the balance between over-repeating characters I know and an onslaught of characters that I don't know.

Use Anki and Skritter. Both will help wonders.