Tim, Alaska Piks are a worthy effort, but they don't really work. Like all finger-mounted picks, they will either (a) fall off at a critical moment, or (b) catch on the string and jam up your finger.

If you're playing fingerstyle, your best friend is a good nail file. My experience is that filed nails are more robust than clipped nails, and it's easier to fine-tune them to the right length with a file than a clipper. Some people (classical music gurus) say they sound better than clipped nails too, but us mere mortals are unlikely to notice. Keep your right-hand nails filed level with or just beyond the fingertip (1-2mm longer at most) as you look at your fingers sideways on. Shorter than that, and there's no nail to catch the strings, which gives a fuzzy, weak "thud" kind of sound. Longer than that, and the nails are the only thing catching the string so you get a thin, metallic sound, plus the nails are weaker so you'll be forever breaking them. Somewhere in the middle, both the fingertip flesh and the nail are hitting the string, giving a good solid sound.

If you bite your fingernails, stop immediately. Or at least restrict yourself to your left hand anyway (which is my deal with myself! :-)

If you're currently strumming chords, starting doing fingerstyle patterns on those chords will improve your left-hand no end. Playing a chord, you might not hear that you're not quite holding down one of the strings properly, or that you're fouling an open string with your fingers. Playing fingerstyle, each note rings out individually, so there's no hiding place! :-)

For simple fingerpicking, the main thing for starting is to keep your thumb covering all the bottom three strings, and the next three fingers covering the top three strings. I think Don kind of hints at this. This is the "default" fingerpicking position. Obviously as you get better then you'll be able to break away from this, but you want to get comfortable with playing like this before you start doing anything more fancy.

A few fingerpicking patterns to try. I'll try and avoid the "p/i/m/a" notation that Don's used too. It's correct, but it's confusing to start with, so I'm going to show it as strings, where "6" is bottom E and "1" is top E. Remember that strings 6/5/4 (E/A/D) are all played with the thumb. And play any chord - Am and G work well for practise, but the same patterns will work on all chords. Also note that all these patterns are based on 4 beats to the bar.

Simplest pattern: 5 3 2 1 or 6 3 2 1. Try the two on different chords and see how they sound.

A better pattern: 5 2 3 1 or 6 2 3 1. This is a very common pattern, so it's worth getting the hang of.

Once you can do those, try alternating the string played by the thumb, so: 5 2 3 1 | 4 2 3 1 or 6 2 3 1 | 5 2 3 1. Or any variations.

All these assume equal-length notes. Another different pattern would be: 5-- 3 1 where the 5 is held for two notes' worth. This sounds very good if you play: 5-- 3 1 | 5 2 3 1 to break up the rhythms. And you can use the same thing for all the other patterns, just holding the first note on for longer and skipping the second note.

All these patterns will be covered in any decent guitar tutor book, but it's something to get you going.

Graham.