Literally just ask chat.gpt to generate a list of free websites and forums to publish your stuff to and voila you’re off to the races.

I just searched for “submit short stories” and this was the first three results.

https://thewritelife.com/where-to-submit-short-stories/

https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/short-story/where-to-submit-short-stories/

https://writers.com/short-story-submissions

If you want to stay within the fediverse, maybe have a look at federated blogging/publishing platforms like WriteFreely or Plume. (Both are also selfhostable).

Edit:

WriteFreely: https://writefreely.org/
Plume: https://joinplu.me/

So I assume you’re asking where to publish your writing to start earning money with it?

Because to “start writing” like answering the question in your title, you just need a pen and some paper or a keyboard and computer or anything similar and start putting words in them.

And it also seems like you’re already publishing it. Something is missing from your question.

I was curious and I tried to find your poetry within your Lemmy profile history. I saw some posts with drawings (for example, the rabbits trying to rescue the rabbit from the magician, the horse chess piece instructing a tower piece on how to arrive somewhere, and so on). They’re really nice and smart.

As for where to publish, I’ll tell what I perceive as I’m someone who sometimes write, too (although I probably differ on genre and styles). I ditched all the mainstream social platforms, so the “biggest” social platforms I’m currently participating are Mastodon and Lemmy (and as from yesterday, I’ve been navigating in Geminispace, but I guess it’s not as big as fediverse, yet).

Interestingly, Lemmy is the platform I get to interact the most, even when Mastodon has way more users. It seems, to me, that Lemmy is more socially active than Mastodon.

But there’s a catch: Lemmy often focuses on what we’re doing right now, discussing things, exchanging ideas and informations. While there are a few communities focused on sharing art, they don’t seem to have the same activity and visibility as, let’s say, Ask Lemmy, Shower thoughts, News, Technology and similar communities.

I saw people recommending Writefreely and Plume. I created accounts on those platforms and tried to publish some texts over there, but I had no relevant interaction whatsoever. They have even fewer users than Mastodon and Lemmy, however, they’re more appropriate for publishing poetry, because they have UIs better made for them.

Perhaps the visibility also depends on the genre and style. I write about eerie, existential and dark things, so I guess it’s not something that’s expected to have much of a reception. People often seek “good vibing” content, especially “funny” content (that’s why memes perform the best). It’s a factor for you to consider asking yourself: “How many people would resonate with my texts?”

That said, I guess you don’t really need social media accounts, you need a public that will resonate with your works and will read them and interact with them. This public can be from fediverse depending on your genres and themes. Publishing the text across different platforms can improve their visibility. Maybe we, as Lemmy users and writers/artists (although I consider myself neither a “writer” nor an “artist”), should seek to post more on Lemmy communities focused on art sharing in order to balance the main Lemmy feed.