So, Cracked.com is a great place for newbie writers to get something they've written published and paid for. The process is crazy and they'll put you through the wringer, and sometimes they'll drive you completely nuts (I've had articles I spent a lot of time researching - got positive feedback from the editors - and then they decide to not publish the article at all!) But they actually do give feedback and they are relatively transparent (at least compared to...well just about everyone else) so after a short time you start getting a good idea of what they want. I've so far had one thing published and paid for, and another paid for but not yet published, and another accepted but not paid for yet. These were collaborative efforts from their "Approved articles that need writers" section (you can find it here).
HERE is the article that I contributed to. I wrote the honeybee section. A pretty fun first article I think. I do have to admit, however, that they largely rewrote it. It's a group write-up to begin with, and then I wrote WAY too many words. I did this because I'm brand new and have no idea how much they'll use, whether my wacky kind of humor is what they want, etc. I think I probably wrote 1,000-1,500 words, and the end product for my section is probably about 300-400 words. But what was published was still mostly not what I wrote - but a rewrite. There are some people submitting and getting paid who clearly can't write at all. With some the errors they make are so bizarre that it's clear English is not their first language. I"m left thinking that Cracked doesn't really want writers so much as researchers (which is fine - I like doing that too!) Someday when I have time I want to go in and look at how much they change from other people's submissions and see if they just always do that and if not, what patterns if any are there as to what and how they make the changes. In the meantime, however, I've got my first "published" story!! And a couple in the pipeline. And a couple others I've made some headway on.
