I'm ten years old and I'm writing a fiction story, and it's 12,000 words long. Is that enough for a novel?

No.

Congratulations! 12,000 is a significant achievement, but depending on the genre of your story, falls short of novel status. And that target keeps moving upward for professionals.

50k was considered standard for a romance novel, but now my clients want 80k stories. Science fiction and fantasy clock in at 80k to 100k, though for those genres, no agent will cry if it’s 120k and a good immersive novel.

If your story is complete at 12K, it is called a novella.

There is nothing wrong with a novella. I got my ghostwriting start in 2014, writing 10k novellas serialized weekly. The client eventually combined the novellas and the book is still selling on Amazon. The last review was a 5-star rating in 2023. Other reviews weren’t so kind. Well, it was my first pro sale.

Keep writing. Practice makes perfect.