so ive been a tech for about two years and finally upgraded to general last month and one of the things i really want to do is get into cw but i honestly have no idea where to begin. like i downloaded a couple apps and they all seem different and i dont know if im supposed to learn the letters one at a time or just kind of throw myself at it and see what sticks. also not sure if i should learn to write it down or just hear it in my head, someone at my club said dont ever write it down but another guy said writing helps at first and now im just confused. is there like a standard way people do this or does everyone just figure out their own thing

the writing thing is actually a real debate and honestly both guys at your club have a point depending on where youre at. when you're just starting out copying to paper can feel like a crutch but it also keeps your brain from panicking when you miss a letter because you just keep going. the problem is some people get stuck on it and can never copy in their head later. what worked for me was the Koch method, theres a free program called lcwo.net which walks you through it — you start with just two characters at full speed, like 20wpm, and you dont add a new one until you can copy the ones you have at like 90% accuracy. the key is learning the sound of each character as a whole sound, not counting dots and dashes. took me maybe 4 months of 20-30 minutes a day before i was making actual qsos on air and they were rough at first but thats fine. just dont try to learn all 26 letters before you ever hear any of them at speed, thats where a lot of people give up.

yeah lcwo is good, also check out the ham morse app and just w1aw practice files if you want something more old school feeling. i remember being totally lost at first too and the thing that actually made it click for me was just turning on a cw net and listening even when i couldnt copy anything. after a few weeks i started recognizing cq and rst and callsign patterns even before i could decode every letter. dont stress too much about a perfect method just pick one thing and stick with it for at least a month before deciding it isnt working