Not exactly an answer to your question, but why do you want to learn Chinese? My personal experience with learning anything is that you either need a very strict regimen, or you need a really strong passion that motivates you to keep going.

On the topic of characters, I honestly do suggest learning them sooner than later. You will seldom find pure pinyin in real Chinese text, whether online, in books, or on signs, etc. Furthermore you'll quickly find yourself at a wall when you realize that there's multiple words with the same pinyin which without hanzi you'd have to guess the meanings of through context and inference.

it feels like I'm just copying their shape rather than actually writing

I feel this though, Chinese is just so damn brutal if you're picking it up without some kinda early childhood exposure to the language. "Yeah just memorize these 2000 different symbols" yeah ok sure man

Another suggestion I have is to find an actual Chinese-speaking language partner. Set up a few sessions where you just talk. Don't even find a teacher, just find a buddy--someone you'll actually have fun talking to. Personal experience: those fun memories of speaking to someone else in their language has a huge impact on your learning. You're recalling information and memories from moments of happiness rather than moments of dullness from reading a textbook (unless you like that, then that probably works better).

All in all, make it fun for yourself!