It's more that it will probably take you (or anyone else starting out in programming) that long to learn enough about general programming to have the basis needed for OS dev. You can start now, but don't be surprised if you find it a lot harder than you expect, and you will probably want to start over more than once.
If you haven't already, I would strongly recommend reading the introductory material in the wiki:
Getting StartedHow To Ask QuestionsFAQRequired KnowledgeBeginner Mistakes (the "deadlines" section in particular)
What order should I make things inCode ManagementHow kernel, compiler, and C library work togetherUsing Programming
Languages other than C
Real Mode, especially the section on memory addressing, and
SegmentationMemory Map,
Detecting Memory and
A20 LineBIOS, and
Boot SequenceInterruptsBootloader and
Rolling Your Own BootloaderFAT and
SFSWhile this is a lot of reading, it simply reflects the due diligence that any OS-devver needs to go through in order to get anywhere. OS development, even as a simple project, is not amenable to the Stack Overflow cut-and-paste model of software development; you really need to understand a fair amount of the concepts and principles before writing any code, and the examples given in tutorials and forum posts generally are exactly that. Copying an existing code snippet without at least a basic idea of what it is doing simply won't do. While learning itself is an iterative process - you learn one thing, try it out, see what worked and what didn't, read some more, etc. - in this case a basic foundation is needed at the start. Without a solid understanding of at least some of the core ideas before starting, you simply can't get very far in OS dev.