Finger Trouble

When you start strumming along on guitar for the first time, you won't get much cooperation from your fingers. This will get better with practice of course but there are a few things you should know that might help you:

1. The most obvious  and important thing here is that with more practice you will get better. So keep at it as much as possible but make sure you practice correctly.
2. Make sure your nails are trimmed. There are lots of jokes about guitarists being primadonna's, to illustrate this I have spoken to guitarists that actually go to salons to get their nails taken care of. When I played drums in a band throughout high school, one of my guitarists would get his nails done once a month... he would have done it more if he had the money. Regardless, you must take care of your nails and make sure they aren't too long.
3. You must use the tips of your fingers. Sometime it helps to draw a line with a Sharpe on the tip of your finger about one millimeter away from your nail. That's where the strings must be pressed. You do this to avoid pushing or muting other strings. For some people, like me, this is dificult because you have small hands/fingers which leads us to number four.
4. If you have the curse of small hands then I feel your anguish. It's difficult to move around the fret board and hit all the right notes when you have short fingers. This will only go away with more practice and more work. You have to build up tremendous strength in your hands to make those distances and fight through the fatigue. If all else fails you can actually get guitars that have shorter frets.