Easier mining in terraria? My wrist is killing me!

Update: Terraria has had full controller support on PC since v1.31 (May 22, 2016).

I've played Terraria for hours on the Xbox, but have recently started playing more on the PC. I've found that holding down the mouse button and moving pixel by pixel back and forth just murders my wrist. Is there something stupid I'm missing? I actually love the two modes on the xbox controller.

A new answer to an old question:

PC version of Terraria now supports 'auto' mode. If you hit 'ctrl', you can tab to this mode, which will auto select blocks to remove. So, for example, if you wish to dig a tunnel, you only need to hold the mouse button and the 'wasd' key down - no need to swipe back and forth with your mouse!

You're not missing anything. It's one of Terraria's flaws on PC.

For digging sideways, there's really nothing you can do.

For digging down, you can dig a hole 2 wide without moving your mouse by placing the cursor near your feet and moving your character back and forth. If it needs to be wider, just start at the top of your 2 wide hole with the cursor at your feet and dig down one column at a time.

The upcoming pc update may do something to help this situation, and will at the least have a rocket launcher weapon which could possibly be used for easier sideways tunneling.