help!!!

[Patrice Henry]

This may sound really stupid, but in being a 
computer technician, I know what it is to be humbled by your work.  If you 
ever want to feel stupid, fix a computer problem.  I didn't think I could 
feel much dumber until I tried working on GCC on RH Linux 6.1.  I am trying 
to learn C, and the book I am reading from to teach myself the process said I 
needed a compiler.  I found one in Linux, so I thought, great!
 
Well, in trying to actually run the compiler to get 
through my first lesson (hello, world), I can't figure out how to run GCC.  
I have looked at the howto and the man pages, and your home page, but can't 
figure out just how to do anything more complex than getting the version of GCC 
that is on my Linux box.  I find the information confusing, with nothing 
simple that actually tells me how to use the application.  I am new to 
Linux, so this doesn't help.  I have all but given up hope on how to figure 
out just how to get it going.  I run the gcc command with 
<filename>.c and that is about as far as it goes.  
 
I am DOS and Windows trained, and am trying to 
expand my horizons, so I installed Linux and figured that learning the coding in 
Linux instead of Windows might help me get more adept at Linux.  I am one 
of those morons who is used to the GUI and I probably deserve the RTFM response, 
but everything I have read on this is written for someone that knows how to code 
in the first place.  There is no step 1, this is how you start the compiler 
or anything dumbed down that far.  Your web site is pretty much the same 
way.  There are a bunch of commands, but not the ones I need just to get 
started.  Any help you could provide would be helpful.  
Thanks.