Do you know any other PL? It would be advantageous if you know at least one. I suggest you choose an assembler that suites your needs, I'm personally using MASM32 (using the WinAsm Studio IDE) right now. There are others namely FASM, NASM.. HLA, etc. Also, you could grab the AoA 16-bit edition to grasp the basics. It may look scary at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be coding like you're coding in a high level language. ;)
Though I'm still not well versed with it, don't hesitate to post question, we'll try our best to give help. *gulp*
Thanks for your interest in asm.