It would help if you would provide more information about what you were actually trying to do.
Generally speaking, stories submitted by (Story) Admins appear immediately unless
- the date has been set into the future or
- the "draft" flag has been set
Stories submitted by normal users end up in the submission queue first, unless
- the submission queue has been switch off in config.php or
- the user in question has got the 'story.submit' permission
If stories only appear a few minutes after you posted them, it may be a problem with the time on your webserver (e.g. the web server and MySQL server using slightly different times). Try asking your hosting service for help here.
bye, Dirk