Welcome [member="colin41ruby"]
You may actually want to start by deciding what you want as your character name, and create a subaccount (you can do that from your profile) with the character's name to match the character.
After that, you can post who your character is and what they are about in the
character creation forum. Remember that characters should have strengths *and* weaknesses. Your backstory can be as simple or as complex as you like.
Once you have a bio up, you are free to join RPs, there is no approval process. As [member="Valashu Elahad"] said, private RPs aren't available for other people to hop in to randomly, those are created by two or more people without an invitation for others. You can however join public/open RPs, or join a faction to get involved with more chances to interact with other characters!
The
LFG Forum is a great place to post if you are looking for people to RP with, once you know what kind of character you are playing and what kind of situations you'd like to see them get in to!