I'd be interested because so far I mostly hear from people trying this approach, but not actually succeeding.
I would agree that the value of writing characters diminishes quickly after the first few hundred.
I can only write a handful of characters (probably less than 100?).
I probably would get the characters mixed up less frequently if I practiced writing them, but I don't think I would have been able to learn so many if I was doing that.
In Chinese, writing characters, and knowing their meaning helps a lot more, I guess.