In many ways, I actually consider LATEX to be easier to use than many of the popular ``WYSIWYG'' word processors. This is primarily because LATEX does not require me to spend a lot of time worrying about how my document looks. Unless you have studied graphical design, you're likely to be just as uncertain as I am about exactly what fonts and styles are appropriate for which situation. While LATEX will let you specify the exact font to use for each letter, it generally lets you concentrate on how your document is structured. LATEX's standard document styles have reasonable defaults for most things. In the introduction to the LATEX User's Guide and Reference Manual, Leslie Lamport discusses this by contrasting visual design, where the author specifies the visual appearance of their document, and logical design, which insists the author specify the logical structure.
I was reminded of this when I had an opportunity recently to use a
popular Macintosh word processor. Where in LATEX one might start a new
section with \section{ Logical Design}
, in this word processor I
had to spend several minutes looking at lists of available fonts, sizes,
and styles before I could type the section title. Every time I started a
new section I was forced to remember exactly which font, size, and style
I had used before. While attention to the appearance of your document
is important, it seems that many of these popular word processors force
you to spend so much time specifying the appearance that you may easily
lose sight of what you are trying to communicate.