yeah, i don't stick the wire out very far. i always point the gun towards the start of the weld, i learned this in my days of doing dual shield(both flux and gas, used for deep penetration on thick joints) at school.
when doing most kinds of joints, i use a weaving zig-zag technique. get a nice puddle going, move it slightly up and to the other side, and over and over again. i used this technique on a stick welder to run my root passes, then generally drag all the other passes with some slight side to side movement to flatten the bead out. some people may say its a bit weaker but i've never had a problem with slag inclusions -- when my test plates were bent, there were 0 discontinuities on my vertical plates
