It's always exciting testing the deep sky waters for the first time.....but not a great M42 at this stage.
Things you might want to work on:
1) focus....stars should be a s small and tight as your optics will deliver...settling for anything else is never a good look.
2) tracking. Stars are round (spherical really) Any other shape shows something is amiss in tracking and or guiding. Take care to polar align accurately
3) Guiding. Just an extension of tracking, accurate guiding will deliver even tighter stars.
4) Noise. More exposure time, extended stacking, cooled cameras etc. all help reduce the grainy look of underexposed images.
5) Dynamic range. The core of M42 is remarkably bright, and will burn out long before the extended nebulosity is revealed. The trick is to layer several exposures (short for the trapesium, longer for the rest)
Stick with it