Where would be a good place to begin if I want to get my "stories" published?

Why don’t you start a blog? If you can write interesting posts based on your experiences, and develop a strong following, that will give you credibility when you pitch stories to say parenting magazines or websites. There are a million places you can publish now. Check out where other people who are talking about family, children and parenting are publishing and see which places most suit the content you want to publish.

You could also check out writing competitions. Start writing short stories and submit some. There are also online and print magazines for short stories.

I believe Amazon has a self-publishing service in which you can actually make $$.

Thanks @Earthbound_Misfit….It’s been so long I’d forgotten how to go about doing this stuff. I bet it’s a lot easier to get your stories out to them now than it used to be, when we used snail mail.
BTW, I do have a blog, but not a strong following.

I’ll check Amazon, @Pachy.

Damn it! I wish there was someone to hold my hand! You ever feel like that?

You need to promote your blog @Dutchess_III. There’s lots of competition. Use your FB page to share your blog and use Twitter. Every time you make a post, send it out to your FB and Twitter followers. Ask them to share with their followers/friends. You have to actively get your work out there. And if you do, and you’re successful, publishers may even come to you. People who write successful blogs are approached by more mainstream publishers, and even book publishers, to produce other content. Good luck with it.

As to hand holding, you have lots of support available through your friends here. Ask people to read over your posts before you upload them to your blog. Think about photos (you take photos) you can use too. Although I’d be careful about including recognisable pics of your grandkids. They might not like that later on.

Thank you, @Earthbound_Misfit. 100X thank you.

I’m so….not confident about this.

So, let’s start with you. Did you take a look at my blog? And what did you think? Some of the pics wouldn’t line up right. I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to fix it, though.

Also, I’ll talk to Mom and Dad about the pics of their kids.

“I question the value of name tags as an aid to future identification. I have approached too many people who have spent the entire evening talking to my left bosom. I always have the insane desire to name the other one.”
Inimitable Erma Bombeck, “I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression.”
I was looking for a Bombeck kid quote I know, didn’t find it, So posted a hilarious Erma.

Blog and polish your unique turn of phrase as well as your oftentimes unique perspective. Try writing creatively about kids at the store? I read your blog and it was humorous, but didn’t show a lot of universality.

My blogs aren’t made up stories @ibstubro.

These sites buy stories and articles:
WikiNut
PersonaPaper
Chat About
SeraphicInsights
MyLot
MyKites
Tsu
Bitlanders
Triond
Hubpages
Infobarrel
Seekyt
Orble
DollarStretcher
WriterDomain
MetroParent
TravelBlog
Cracked.com (humour)

iWriter

Thank you @Espiritus_Corvus.

Good luck!

I’m chicken.

If I were to engineer a new writer’s career, I would suggest a few local and national contests. The reputable ones expose you to the all-important agencies, editors and publishers. The awards look excellent on a new writer’s resume and this translates into money later on. More importantly, a win builds the writer’s confidence exponentially. Here are a few writer’s competitions:

25 Writing Competitions These all pay cash awards and give good exposure to literary agencies. They cover poetry, short fiction and non-fiction, from the Drue Heinz Literature Prize ($15,000), to the Bulwer-Litton Award which admittedly pays “a pittance,” but is a lot of fun. Most of these competitions pay around a grand for 500 to 1,000 words, which could subsidize the new laptop.

WritersViews.com lists 17 good contests to test your mettle, connect with agents and maybe pay for the next writer’s conference you may want to attend.

Here’s 18 more from Writer’s Relief

Then there are the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s The Best American Series, Northwestern University’s Annual Writing Competition

The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is one of the most honored literary projects in America. It exposes you to the small, independent press yearning for something new that larger houses might find too risky. This is where the beautifully odd ones, like Brautigan, Bukowski and Kerouac would’ve gotten their start if it existed in their day.

A new, important one, a skyrocket: The Best of the Net. They glean their winners from blogs, but there’s no rule that says that you can’t draw their attention to yours.

Hit the hyperlinks to see rules for submission and dates.

If you’ve never done this before, you might want to read this article on contests, real and fake. This article is about poetry submissions, but it is true for all submissions.

Here are 6 important questions to ask yourself before you enter a writing contest.

I also advise that you google the contests you want to submit to. Check their reputation. It can’t hurt and it could save you a lot of heartbreak.

There are rules to this writing game and you learn the rules by entering these contests. If you get good enough to get a few of these under your belt, you’ll have no trouble getting published.

Oh my God, @Espiritus_Corvus! I had NO idea! The last time I submitted something, to Women’s Day, in 1997 or so, I got a very dismissive and condescending rejection, so I quit.

I thank you, and thank you again!

LOL!!! From your 6 questions link: “If the contest in question is run by Sam’s Auto Club and Horseshoe Factory, you’re probably not looking at a contest that is well-known in the industry.” Hmmm!

Well, I’m just going to beat this to death, I guess.

A couple of the posters above refer to methods of blog exposure via search engines. The method used is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO copywrighting. Learning simple SEO copywrighting for one’s own use isn’t all that difficult and, for bloggers interested in broader exposure, well worth knowing. It’s all about key words in a story or article designed to attract your target audience when they use a search engine such as Google which makes your work rise to the top of the page. But beware. There are regulations and these engines will punish you by burying your page deep into the ethersphere if they think you’re gaming the system.

First you must decide who your general audience should be: Who might share a commonality with your thoughts? Fellow mothers? The leisure Winnebago crowd? Or to take a cue from @ibstubro, how about housewives who might enjoy a modern Erma Bombeck? Then you come up with the key words, or tags, that you think these people would punch into a search engine when looking for something interesting to read on the given subject. Then you incorporate these words seamlessly into your story or article. There more to it, though. Here is some info on SEO copyrighting that every blogger or webmaster should know:

Here’s a good description of SEO copyrighting plus excellent links at the bottom as well..

Here’s a free booklet on the subject

This is a really good article that describes how to analyze your results and know how many are viewing your pages, who they are and even what country they come from. You might discover a new, unforeseen audience. Most importantly, analysis will tell you why they read your work. Then it’s just matter of feeding the hunger in the most interesting way you can. It used to take years to figure this out.

This stuff is invaluable. As much as I enjoy living a 19th century lifestyle, I couldn’t do it without the net. It’s the best of both worlds. But it takes work… and it’s fun.

****

Stop with the fear thing. Nobody likes rejection and some editors can be brutal. Expect it. But trust in this: the benefits reaped, the self-satisfaction gained by crafting something well of your own making, enjoying what you do and the possibility of significantly supplementing your income far outweigh the beating you take along the way.

Here are some sites that pay writers immediately upon acceptance:

110 Websites that Pay You to Contribute an Article, Instantly
45+ More Websites that Pay You to Contribute an Article, Instantly
30 Websites that Pay You to Contribute an Article, Instantly
”12 Quality Job Boards Every Freelance Writer Should Check Out Today

Here are a few more good sites:
Elance will give you assignments based on what you know. Mostly ad writing to Asia.
Freelancer matches people of different skill sets to employers, including writers with publications that pay.
Upwork does the same thing as Freelancer.
If you need five bucks, send a good shortie to Fiverr.com

The official sites are hyperlinked at the bottom of each Wikipedia article.

Wow…I am speechless. Thank you again! This is too valuable. Keep beating away @Espiritus_Corvus!

I need to make a new email address.

I didn’t look at those links, but Readers Digest pays for small stories and quips, etc. but if they print your stuff, they also own your material, and reprinting it in another publication, even your own, can be a hassle. I think you can get around this by having it printed and copyrighted yourself first.

Also look into the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. They’re always looking for new material.