I'd start by learning the mel api before junping into writing a binary plugin. Mel and writing dll plugins is not something you are going to learn in a weekend or a week, especially if you are not already intimately familiar with using maya from the UI.

In order to efficiently write these kinds of things you have to have a very good handle on what maya can do just using the regular tools. To try and sit down and learn the programming api without understanding the maya tool set is going to be very difficult. There are hundreds of routines and very little documenting how they are used.

I would look into several of the books that have been written for writing maya plugins.