If you’re looking for a writing challenge for February, Children’s Writer has a contest for you – write a 150-word story for a beginning kindergarten reader, age 5 or 6, on the subject of family or school life. Here’s the link:
http://www.thechildrenswriter.com/af627/

I’ve entered these competitions before; they’re free for subscribers to Children’s Writer– I haven’t won, but sometimes it’s nice to have a concrete writing goal – and hey, how hard can it be to write 150 words? Kidding – writing 150 words for a primary student to read independently is tough! The story still has to have a beginning, middle and end, conflict, character development, setting, etc. – but be less than one double-spaced page!! I’ve been working on 1000-word English as a Second Language manuscripts lately, and I find it super hard to pack an entire story, in relatively simple language, into 1000 words.

Deadline for the contest is February 28th, and you can submit via mail or online. Good luck!