GLoves are a must. I use garden gloves that have some vinyl "grippy-ness" to them. Otherwise your hands will not be able to hold onto the fabric without slipping around and messing up your stitches.
1. Sometimes fast is better than slow stitching. Find a pace that you like.
2. Relax your hold. No death grip on the fabric. If you are tense, you take the "free" out of "Free motion." LOL
3. Use fabric that's either solid or tone or tone on at least the top side so you can see your work. Plain muslin or just whatever you're fine practicing on.
4. Watch youtube till you find someone whose method, voice, style, and pace you enjoy and can learn from. THere are some good teachers out there.
5. Get a very large scribble pad--biggest, cheapest you can find, then take a marker and doodle some designs as you watch the youtube videos. There is no substitute for practice--eventually you will have muscle memory.
6. You will have ugly, uneven, messy, crazy, wacky stitches on your first several tries. That's okay. It's normal. It's a learning curve. But the more you doodle, the easier you can transfer to machine. The more you practice on ugly fabric, the better you'll get and the more confident you'll become. Eventually you will find yourself having fun. Push past the uncomfortable, awkward, ugly, tense phases of not liking the process until you realize you are liking it .