Split yer practice time between struming and finger-pickin' and when you do yer strumin' try to get in a little back strum where after the pick goes down it catches stuff on the way back up... Experiement with that... Also, once you have all yer basic chords down where the thinkin' part goes away, it will be time to augmnet them by selectively removing one finger of a string and then back... Again, experiement... Also addin' a string... Like makin' a D chord then using yer pinky to cover the 1st string on the 3rd fret and then movin' it up to the 5th fret...

Oh yeah, yer pinky.. The pinky is very important... Try to learn to make as many chords as possible leavin' it free... You'll be needin' it soon and if yer makin' 1st position chords with it, other than like B7th or F then you may find yerself having to tell yer fingers to unlearn stuff... Surprised no one has brought than one up...

Good luck...

...and stay with it...

Bobert