i've found that inconsistency problems
multiply quite rapidly every time a writer
breaks a book into separate chapters...
so i strongly advise against the practice.
for what it's worth...
-bowerbird
What I'm saying is that if you want to write a full-length novel in one note in nvALT or one preview in Marked, you're going to be sorely disappointed. The tools aren't designed to work that way. Scrivener's usefulness is in direct proportion to how many times you break up your work. The more the better, yet it presents it all as one seamless document. nvALT, with the right system, can work in a similar (though far less useful) way.
If you're writing an entire book in a text file, that's great, but it seems like you're shirking tools that could ultimately be of great use.
I agree that 10,000 or more words just can't be manageable. I've had no problems with 1000-5000 word notes though until NV's find dialog broke in Lion.
I don't use tags in Notational Velocity, or even name affixes most of the time. So I've had to keep the number of notes as small as possible by using long notes and deleting everything that I possibly can. (Currently the library is about 150 notes and 100,000 words.)
I used Scrivener for my notes before NV. But even then I had relatively few, long notes. Scrivener has no equivalent to Search or Create, so it's slower to navigate between notes. And the more files a project has, the more you either have to constantly scroll the source list or toggle the visibility of folders on it.
Remarkbox