Coming from my perspective of having a basic understanding of major/minor scales and being able to name the notes on a piano keyboard, here’s what worked for me:

I chose a free DAW and limited myself to the built-in instruments, then I tried to recreate a song I liked from memory.

My memory and skill was bad enough that the result was nearly 100% different, but sounded good enough to me.

I just started with some percussion, then added a bass line, then added some melody on top, and finally played around with arranging it.

It took a lot of time, but was pretty fun. I hope to go back and learn how to make the song sound good outside of headphones someday!