Treat every chapter as a short story

Treat every chapter as a short story – that’s what I keep telling myself and its working I think my writing is clearer and I am cutting down on the pointless info too. So I wonder how many words I will end up knocking out of The Bittersweet. It currently stands at approximately 82,000 words. I’m happy with that.
It’s odd I look back on when I first started writing. Googling ‘how to write a novel’  when I was in Goa, scribbling in a little notepad my words – that were soon to be edited so...