Kalli, I'm trying to unlearn what you're doing because I spent all year revising a novel and every new scene I added, I was always conscious of using as few words as possible (because I also was cutting 20K from the previous version). I noticed that in a short story I wrote afterwards, I subconsciously wrote everything in as few words as possible, and realized that I was cheating the description of what was happening because of it.
Well, I'm not just writing, I'm also editing, so... some of that wordcount is coming out of other scenes. I've only increased my overall wordcount by 400 words today, but work wise I've cleaned up 2 scenes and continued an unfinished third one. It does make assessing progress hard though.
*sigh*