zimv20 said it properly. It can be broken down into three main sections, recording, mixing and mastering. Working with a method will help you get things done instead of running around in circles. Here's kind of how most people do it.
Compose and arrange, I think you're already good at that and know what it means. Make the music and decide what will play what and when.
Record: record to tracks with as little effect as possible and as cleanly as possible. For your guitar just use a preset that's close enough, don't really bother for now. This means laying down your midi tracks too.
Clean up: this means making sure that all your dubs sound nice, set a noise gate if you need one, use a high pass or low pass filter if need be (for example on a flute the low frequencies aren't useful so you would cut them out). And set automations to volume to make sure it stays consistent, this is usually for vocals that are done in many takes, sometimes you get some parts that are way to soft compared to others.
Mixing: this is the core of it but if you're methodical it can be easier. Now is the time where you will choose the sounds that you will use. This means setting up your amp effects, choosing your drums sounds... Then, it's all about making the sounds work with each other: compressors and eq but most of all relative volumes! Don't solo things to much during mixing, it's not unusual to have tracks that don't really sound good on there own but make the mix come together, like rhythm guitars sometimes sound thin when you solo them but they fit between the bass and lead. Then there's space design, you'll want to send your tracks to a reverb bus, you make a sound stage by putting some things in front and others further back. Usually drums will get more reverb than guitars for example. I personally pan my track near the of the mixing, when I'm trying to make my sounds work together, eq-ing and setting the levels.
Mastering happens afterwards and is usually done to a bounced track. Working strictly with the whole mix. Usually it's not much more than eq and compression. Making sure that the mix sounds good on any speaker and that it can be plenty loud. Also for albums, it's making sure that the sound between the tracks is consistant.
There's a million different ways to go about it but it's important to remember that some things impact other so doing them in an order keeps you from going back and around to the same stuff. Say at the very end of you mixing you decide that the low frequencies in you original guitar signal not good and mainly your palm hitting the strings, you put a high pass filter. Since the sound isn't as loud, you're not getting as much distortion so you raise the gain on the amp. But since there are more high frequencies in the original sound, after the distortion, you're getting even more high frequencies so you'll probably have to take look at the eq and level as well. So that's one step that if you did first would have saved you like ten steps later on.
I know you're starting out and probably learn a lot as you go along but when you start running around in circles, it's a good time to take a break. I'm not saying that I completely follow a plan either, it's a creative endeavour it's good to change your mind half-way. Actually, I make electronic music so I spend most of my time running around in circles
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