Shad0w, my experience with kanji is that when you write the proper stroke order enough times, eventually it becomes muscle memory. That is stage 1 you have surpassed. Then, stage 2 is something akin to being able to write things in proportion without fretting about it. This comes fairly naturally over time. Finally, a stage 3 (these are arbitrary lines I'm drawing, of course) is met, where you are able to fluidly write the kanji properly in every way, and it looks messy like a native's!
Also, when I said it doesn't look natural, perhaps what I should have said was that it doesn't look
native. One might even say there is a Stage 4, where you use all the crazy shortcuts real natives use. You can see things closely related to these "shortcuts" I refer to in calligraphy.
Of course, no one writes like calligraphy in real life, but there are some things that are shortcuts for radicals that I've seen people write in everyday life. I don't consider myself native enough to use these—I'd possibly use one incorrectly!
