h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, this is getting out of hand! I've started from the beginning and gone through the first couple of chapters and added 1727 extra words.

It does make a difference - the extra details help the place and the people feel more real. The problem is, without lots of genuine descriptions to draw on it's easy to end up with stuff that sounds cliched and predictable. Also I've had to keep a careful note of how much I wrote before and how much I've added. My brain hurts!

That is good 1,700 words extra in two chapters

What do you mean noting how much you added? Is each chapter to be the same length?

I've written the thing in separate chapters - one chapter per day. If I want to add more material to a chapter, I have to note how many words I've already got before I start writing. Otherwise, I get in a muddle .

It would probably be better to put the whole thing in one document. Then it wouldn't matter where I added my words.

Ah. Yes, my novel is just one document, so the document wordcount is the cumulative total, which is very easy to copy across to the NaNo website each day.

Advantages and disadvantages, I guess - sometimes I would like it to be easier to find a particular chapter, and the sub-document structure would be handy for that, but for ease of editing, one document is easy to scroll through.