You need to learn HLSL there are only a few folks around here that do shaders and they would have had to learn the language and how the pipeline works.
Some might suggest buying Dark Shader, if your doing shader work I would recommend it, but it doesn't mean you will be able to click and create, its mainly for quick viewing and testing of your shader code as you build it, its a great program for tweaking and getting an idea of how your shader may look in game quickly and highlights errors.
There are a couple of good books out there, bond1 describes it as difficult at first but then you have one of those Aha! moments and it all comes together.
Sometimes you can get away with trial and error.
Awesome! Its one of those threads.