Another piece of advice is to start out with a large, yet really thin pick when you first begin strumming because they're much more forgiving when you're not coordinated.
When I first started strumming on the guitar, I had a small Jazz Dunlop 3 pick which made it much more difficult than it had to be. (hindsight's always 20-20)
The key is to control your strumming wrists movement so that it's consistent. Just let the pick brush over the tops of all the strings with a nice, gentle up and down and a fairly stiff grasp of the pick between your thumb and index finger.
If I'm playing along with a song that has a nice rhythm, I actually start tapping my foot and moving side to side. I find that when I get into it, I get to the point where I'm not even thinking about the strumming, it just becomes natural after a while.
When you get comfortable with strumming and have a feel for rhythm (which is super important), move onto fingerstyle and your playing will start to sound much more interesting (this applies more to acoustic than electric)
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