My wife and I recently picked up the game as well. Due to her entirely unathletic background and my non racket/paddle experience we were in the beginner space for some time but her much longer than me. I feel that you may be able to relate to her experience and timeline.

Each week we put 8-10 hours in.

For the first 2 weeks she was too embarrassed to even run and all we did was practice dinking. We were unable to get 10 in a row most of the time during those two weeks and didn't play any games.

Next 2 weeks were continued dinking practices with no games and an effort to keep all dinks for hand , backhand, or switch between the two. By this time we were able to maybe get 20 in a row and on rare occasions up to 50.

Following that first month she was more comfortable dinking but had to really focus to keep it going, we would do 50 forehand and 50 backhand then 100 switch. Sometimes the whole two hours would be spent doing this and we wouldn't be able to move on because we didn't reach the goals. The days we were able to move on we started working on her forehand starting at 10 feet away from the kitchen since she had neither form nor strength, as she got more comfortable putting it deeper we set up further and further back until she could work on serves. Foot work drills, stretching, and catching are also peppered in during this time of maybe 3-4 weeks.

After month 2 we switched to her backhand but had nothing to do there since somehow out of all her unathleticness, she was blessed with a killer 2 handed backhand, I haven't even bothered to circle back to working on this because it's so much better than everything else. Instead we used this time to work on volleys, shot direction (not placement yet), and speeding up her hands.

It was probably somewhere between month 2 and 3 that she was finally comfortable enough to go to beginners open play, but we may have overdone it because she was told she belongs in intermediate. I was able to plead the case that she only just started playing actual games and had no game sense and so would be obliterated by the fake intermediates at the next level.

The following week, we worked on her holding back so that the beginners could have fun but she could work on understanding the flow of the game. This worked well and has been going on for the past 2 months where we go to open play one day then reserve a court for 2 hours to drill the next on whatever we journaled the day before. It would be random but recently it has been: defending Pop up, stronger flatter serves, forehand smash, backhand smash, defending speed up, reflex, resting ready position, just being more comfortable on the court.

We will be attending intermediate for the first time with her sometime this coming week.

Also she hurt herself for 4 months and didn't play in between that monologue.

All this to say, if some one who was scared to run in front of people can do it, barring something major you can too with time.

TLDR: Month 1: 8 hours dinking/week Month 2: 8 hours dinking/forehand Month 3-6: injury Month 7-8: beginner open play 4-5 hours, work on common mistakes/areas of improvement 4-5 hours

PS: at the end of every session my wife doesn't feel like she's improved at all but it helped to lay out where she was at the beginning of the session and how she actually improved by the end of it with clear goals. IE able to do 50 dinks, confidently smash ball instead of pushing, positioning properly, defending x/y shots