It's definitely not the easiest thing to figure out, but keep at it, learning each piece as you need it with the tutorials. I would recommend recent info. I think you can do more formatting with markdown compared to the built-in editor, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable with it.

Useful things to do:

(1) find people who write well or share good info; follow them (they will be in your feed)

(2) comment in a detailed way on posts that are meaningful to you. This is especially useful on posts in the New category--look for a pulldown symbol next to Trending to find New. Note: a lot of people are plagiarizing, so I spot check paragraphs on Google on well-written posts

(3) generally support other people by following, commenting, and upvoting when the content is worthy

(4) share yourself, your creativity, and your knowledge with the community; for God's sake don't rip off other people's work; proofread your own work; provide visuals

(5) don't expect to make much money initially, and be delighted if you do

(6) promote your posts (this is the part I'm bad at, but there are a lot of good Marketing posts to help you with this, such as this one by @steemrocket that I read tonight: https://steemit.com/marketing/@steemrocket/supercharge-your-steemit-post-traffic-using-these-9-tactics

(7) don't worry that you don't understand it all yet

(8) look for info re chat. I have signed up but haven't spent time on that yet

(9) avoid flagging until you understand when to flag.

I've been on the site only a short time, but I no linger feel like a total newbie. Good luck.