First of all, I really enjoyed reading this thread. Welcome back to the community, Marnie! Though I wasn’t involved in it myself as far back as you (other than to play a few games now and then), it just makes me happy to hear from someone “new” with a history in the community. I’m glad you’re here!
Also, have you looked at the Inform Beginner’s Guide in the pinned resources section of this forum? You can download a PDF, and I have found it to be an excellent introduction to Inform 6. It walks you through writing/programming three sample games from beginning to end. It should be more than enough to get you started up again, and given your experience I’m fully confident you can fill in any gaps later. I myself paid to have a printed, bound copy made which I really like. I wrote about it here. (You can find a link to the service I used in that post.)