you're still comparing apples to oranges, tsg... camus was as far from a 'new and unknown' writer as one can get, when he published his first novel... he was already a well-known international figure, a highly respected [and controversial] essayist and lecturer... so he could have had any length novel published by then...
That's not the advice at all. "Filling with nonsense" is actually a surefire way to thwart any chance of publication. You need to write your story to a length that fits it. Some stories are only meant to be short stories, others are meant to be 6-book series. I feel like there's little you can do about that, because if you try to condense or stretch it, it's going to feel unnatural. I think many beginning writers write in one of three ways: 1) Condensing a longer story so that it is too short, e.g. not enough description, not enough character depth, not enough plot development, or 2) Stretching out a shorter story in ways that inhibit the story's progression, e.g. making a dialogue scene far too long, adding in too much backstory or scene details. 3) some combination of the two, e.g. some scenes are far too long but there's not enough plot depth, etc. I think it's a balance, and you have to figure out what length works best for your story. It's just a matter of writing it well so that it fits this balance. Many stories will have the potential to meet this ideal, so work on your craft and your story will very likely find itself a publishable length naturally. If it doesn't, then write another story that will, and keep that one in your reserves for after you've published and made a name for yourself.
You also need to choose a story that has the right amount of substance for a first novel. If that offends your sense of artistic purity, you will have to be satisfied with creating art for art's sake, and not sell out to the commercial publishing market. You cannot have it both ways.
Yes, but I was offering an alternative. You said that the options were to "choose a story that has the right amount of substance for a first novel" or "be satisfied with creating art for art's sake". There is the third possibility of choosing a story that doesn't have the right amount of substance for a first novel but aiming for a different publication format. That way the questioner still writes their story and it's not just "art for art's sake".
which won't be of any interest to a paying publisher if you're not a well-known author, unless you're world famous for some other reason...
Yes, too short for book. Try publishing individual stories in a magazine. Think for a bigger concept, one that will stretch for hundreds of pages. Do 300-400 pages, edit, and try to publish that.
7000 words is not even 30 typed pages. That doesn't qualify as a book under any circumstances. However, you can always self-publish as an ebook and then it doesn't really matter.
pea... don't go by page count... agents, editors, and publishers only deal in word count... and, as noted in earlier replies here, for a first adult novel by a new, unknown writer, most publishers want 80-100k... the preferred upper limit varies a bit for some genres and can be as low as 40k for the younger half of the YA market... non-fiction can also vary, depending on what kind it is... the main thing is to check the guidelines of each publisher you intend to submit to and make sure that what you have to offer fits within their parameters...
Pages, words, they're interchangeable to me. Thank you for the information. Do you think 120k words is too high for a first-time author's fantasy novel?
