I know what you mean about "conquering"! But after a while, by writing or typing lists of vocabularly, my brain sort of went to autopilot and suddenly the words I was writing no longer had meaning to them. x__x Now, as a warm up, I write or type lines of sentences in which both new and old words fit, which is a pretty common exercise, I think. I start out with something really small for the first line, and then the next line I increase the length of the sentence. Then I increase the length further (adding more substance), and then I change the subject or the tense, turn it into a question, and so on.
Like:
Deir sé go bhfuil sí anseo.
He says that she is here.
Deir sé nach bhfuil sí anseo.
He says that she is not here.
Deir sí nach bhfuil seisean anseo anois, ach tá sise anseo.
She says that he is not here now, but she is here.
Deir sí nach mbeidh sé anseo amáireach, ach beidh siad anseo aríst ar aon chaoi.
She says he will not be here tomorrow, but they will be here again at any rate.
I'll make changes to the forms (normal, emphatic) and the pronouns to make sure I give them all proper attention because I hate being stuck on things like that. For instance, being on a roll writing my own paragraph and then screeching to a halt because I can't remember how to say "we have" or something. >.< It's so I get the new words to stick in my head with more meaning behind them and to help me think in Irish rather than in English. I'm getting better at writing in Irish as I'm thinking in Irish, but more often I catch myself in my head reading Irish as English because it's easier; I have to focus on deliberately thinking Irish words than English words as I'm reading! I've improved, but I still got a way to go before I read Irish by default without reminding myself to stop translating out of habit. Anyway, once I feel I'm "warmed up" with practice sentences, then I will write a paragraph that's relatable to myself until I can't think of anything more to add. Today, I wrote a simple paragraph describing my living room. Normally, I like to write with pen/pencil on paper like you, but I've begun to run low on blank notebooks with a growing collection of filled notebooks, haha! So I've started to do more of my practice on the computer in Notepad or Wordpad.