[Lexy]

All you need is a basic hiragana chart. Anything more than that is unnecessary. Since it sounds like you already have a book, study more from it. I write in all hiragana/katakana/kanji just a fluent and fast as I write English letters just because I practice writing them so often. Just reading and studying them is going to do you no good.

I learned hiragana and katakana within a month by taking a Japanese book/manga and writing down the romaji on a piece of paper. Then I would put the book away, look at the romaji, and on another sheet of paper write all the romaji back into hiragana. It gets your mind working both ways and gets your hand practicing the characters. If you're having a hard to remembering and you need little clues to help you out ( for instance, the character 'ki' (き) looks like a key.) There's a pretty nifty book that has hints like that, along with boxes to practice your writing in. I know it sounds very elementary, but I teach fifth graders Japanese and that's what I use: 'Kana Can Be Easy'.

Good luck with learning your characters!