Help!

Right... apparently Blogger has tricked me into upgrading to beta, and I now can't do anything with the coding because it's all in xml not html. If anyone has any knowledge of how to build your own layout using the new format, please let me know! Everything online is for the old format, and I hate every single one of the boring default templates available. I don't want to use someone else's, I want my own. Bah!