Short Story Publishing?

[breezeshadow]

Hello everyone. So I've been a writer for ages, and today, after showing one of my friends my writing and having her like it, I started to consider whether I may actually be good enough to get into publishing. There's just a few concerns about this.

First off, I don't know if I'm actually good enough. I have stuff posted on my DW (here, here, and here are the recent ones), and on my dA are edited/more complete versions of those three stories, along with other things (dA here.). But I know my friends saying I'm good enough to publish does not necessarily mean I am, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. You don't need to read every one, or any, or give any extensive critique if you don't want to; I just want to make sure I'm not jumping the gun.

Second, I am a fantasy writer. As far as I could tell, there are very few publishing venues that are interested in short stories of the fantasy variety. Does anyone here have any experience with magazines, online and off, that accept fantasy submissions? Or know of any? I could write realistic stories, but they aren't my preference.

Also any advice about this would be fantastic. I've never tried submitting anything before, so I don't really know how it goes. Thus, any comments at all would be fantastic.

Thank you! Sorry for not replying much here; don't have much time to think about DW this semester.

Comments

[prisoner_24601]

The duotrope and ralan suggestions are really good ones. And since you write fantasy and are looking for markets, I thought I'd specifically mention The Writers of the Future Contest, which is a really tough market to crack, but one that's specifically tailored to new writers, has a pretty nice cash payout if you make it, plus they fly you out on their dime to a lavish award ceremony where you attend workshops given by well known pro writers. It's a pretty sweet deal for the twelve writers a year who make it.

The contest is quarterly and you can enter four times a year which is nice because it provides a deadline and even if you get rejected, you have four stories you can shop somewhere else. A lot of people submit continuously for years until they either pro out or win. Plus even though there's thousands of stories as your competition each quarter, they have an honorable mention system which lets you know how you're doing as a writer (if you get an honorable mention, you know if you're probably in the top 10%, and then on up for the other tiers), which you almost never get from other markets. If you get high enough (I think semi-finalist) you get an actual critique from the judge.