On the basis of reading this forum and many peoples comments about Mellel I have just bought it as it just looks so quirky and I love the old typewriter icon.
OK so where do I go from here… 
Best thing to do is read the manual about styles. It will be critical as you begin to use the power of Mellel. Auto-titles will be critical as well.
And pay regular visits to the Mellel forum. There you’ll read many interesting things both on Mellel’s strong sides and on its weak sides.
I bought Mellel back when I first switched to Macs because it came bundled with Bookends at a reduced price. I didn’t like it at first and spent a lot of time looking for a replacement word processor to use for long documents that wouldn’t roll over and make me crazy the way Word does.
Long story short: After being put off for months by the terrible tales of what a long learning curve Mellel has, I finally just sat down and began playing with it. No problems. None. It’s the simplest word processor for long documents I’ve ever met.
If you want to use it to work with a long manuscript, all you have to do is set up a style set with your preferred spacing, fonts, font sizes, etc and give it a name. I use the unoriginal name “manuscript” for my style set, but I imagine the creative types on this board could do much better. Once you create that style set, it’s done. After that, using Mellel for various long manuscripts becomes push-button easy … and all the good things they say about it (doesn’t crash, works with Bookends, etc) are true.
My two caveats to this are (1) It’s a bit flaky if you need to move something to Word. The best way I’ve found is to export it as a rtf first, then import it into Word from that. Since my manuscripts are dead simple, that’s all I need to do. Also, (2) I think it might be klutzy for business type use. It’s an academic’s/writer’s word processor. I know I’m not supposed to say this on this board, but for business and office work, nothing I’ve used can challenge Word.
You may be surprised after you use it for a while. Mellel for long documents is so easy and stable that it kind of goes away. Once your styles are set, there’s just nothing else to do with it. I’ve used it for years without doing anything but writing with it. That could be boring for a software tinkerer, but if all you wanna do is write, it’s great.
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
It’s really just another excuse to not be creative, as I have to learn the software!
Mellel is really fantastic. I’ve a long book in the works with lots of musical examples and Mellel handles everything easily and quickly. I suggest you work through Don Broadribb’s Mellel Tutorial for Beginners. He does a great job of introducing the key concepts of Mellel as well as explaining how Mellel differs from other word processors (when it does).
Redlex has changed its website (partially it seems) and I had trouble finding my way around, but you can find the new version of this tutorial (for Mellel 2.8) here: redlers.com/mellelwritten.html
It’s available as both a PDF and as a Mellel file.
Christopher
Edit: Just noticed another link to the beginner’s tutorial in an earlier post above. That version of the tutorial is out of date. Use the link for the new 2.8 version.