Finally started writing the novel project

Wrote my first 1,000 words on September 22nd, and have now passed the 3,000 mark, keeping up with my target of just over 1,000 words per day.
In preparation I had printed out in advance scene and character notes and sumaries, and my tactic is to merely scan these in advance of writing a scene and to 'go with the flow'.

I'm conscious, however, of the fact that the original had perhaps too much long expository paragraphs in the first two chapters, so I've made a deliberate decision to trim that substantially, with the aim of speeding up the story, while at the same time giving just enough information to maintain interest.
Noting the word count as I'm approaching the end of the original's second chapter, and I've just noted, with considerable surprise, that I'm already 1,000 words down on the original word count, although I haven't quite completed the second chapter.

That, in itself, doesn't concern me as I'm very happy with the tense confrontational dialogue-heavy scene I have created for Chapter Two's big scene, and I can always flesh it out, later on, but it probably also means that I'll have to either create additional scenes, or characters, or compensate in later chapters.
Its also just been brought to my attention that the original's word count of 43,000 is not only short of the generally accepted minimum of 50,000 words, but also falls a long way short of the 70,000 average for first novels