This is not true.
Start over.
hugo new site quickstart
cd quickstart
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/ronv/minimalist.git themes/minimalist
echo "theme = 'minimalist'" >> config.toml
mv themes/minimalist/content/ .
hugo server
When you visit http://localhost:1313/ you will see:
Remove the sample content by deleting the markdown files from the content/writing directory.
Add new content with:
hugo new writing/my-first-post.md
But make sure you change the value of draft in front matter to false when you are ready to publish, or run hugo with the -D option.