Good advice from both mechanical_fish and pivo. The GNU Emacs book is a tad old, considering that emacs is now v.22 but it certainly will help you get from nowhere to a slow jog ;-). Considering I too am trying to learn Emacs, here's one thing that I try and do. Learn one new command everyday, and practice that all day. I mean literally - for e.g. Ctrl-T swaps two characters (I learned that one today). I essentially just started typing random letters into emacs and hitting ctrl-t every now and then (amongst some other commands I learned over the last few days).
A good editor has to be an extension of your fingers. Emacs can do that for you, once you accept that the learning curve is extremely steep. Another thing I learned, don't try and bite off more than you can chew. Emacs has several modes and hundreds of extensions that you can install, each with their own commands, and key-board shortcuts (not to mention the initial set up and configuration). Take it one step at a time, figure out the basic commands from the tutorial, and take it from there. Once you have established mastery of moving around within emacs, basic editing, searching etc you will not only be ready, but be much more comfortable with the "zen of emacs".
Here is another discussion (of several more, I am sure) that I came across on HN today. Some good advice there...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=230639
Good luck.