Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Some of you will see that I bumped up my post from a few months ago, inquiring for help on getting back into the writing game. Like the very first time, 16 years ago, when I got published in a small dirt track newspaper, it was through the kindness of people and posting on Hoseheads forum. True to the reputation, Justin Zoch reached out to me at Dirt Monthly and welp, if you've seen the magazine, or know me in person, you know I have two articles in there this month! I'm over the moon. I won't lie, I was very nervous submitting something again, and wondering if it was truly up to par and worthy of being read by anyone else. Writing has always been my passion, but never something I was cocky and confident in, just something I loved to do. My original career path, and college scholarships revolved around writing, in fact. But, I lost my dad my senior year of high school and after a year toward my English degree, my heart was just not in it without him. He had originally been the sole reason I was involved in sprint car racing, and it was our "thing", so losing him took the fire out of it for me for quite some time. I never stopped going though, and never stopped loving the sport and wanting to contribute in some sort of way. Not acheiving my original dream of writing about sprint car racing has nagged at me ever since, and I was dead set on atleast making an attempt in this direction at the end of 2018. I'm over the moon that I have managed to succeed, AND, that Justin has been kind enough to continue to allow me to have more opportunities at this in the future.

I was given the opportunity to spotlight crew chief Jeff Woodruff this month, and this truly put the icing on the cake for me. I have grown up around Woody and Christie, and they are VERY much like family to me. (This is more true than anyone will know, as my blood family has all but disowned me.) Woody and Christie are both amazing at what they do and contribute to the racing community, from Woody being a top notch crew chief, and Christie with the Queen's contest at Knoxville. Their passion and drive is second to none, and I have always been honored to have them in my life. If it wasn't for my dad, I would have never met such amazing people. (I was actually the flower girl in their wedding.)

Dirt monthly is actually online this month and viewable at their webpage (www.dirtmonthly.com) I would love some positive feedback on pages 28 and 126-130. :-D

Merry Christmas everyone!

Great Job !     They were both good articles.     The Woodruff one packed a lot of information into that 1 page.       I didn't know that Trey Starks was going back to Knoxville in 2020 until I read it.    I knew the preliminary night win was big for them but I had no idea it was something Jeff had been chasing for 30 years.

The Route 34 article was very informative and left me rooting for Brad & Jessie and their track.       I didn't notice any glaring grammar errors or typos so I could actually read the whole article without getting distracted and going off on a tangent and complaining about modern journalism.

I also ended up spending about an hour reading the other articles.

Disclaimer:  I know nothing about the Woodruffs or Route 34 so I can't speak for the accuracy.

Thanks for your contributions.   Keep us posted.

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to read them!!

Writing the article on Jeff was very difficult, I've actually been blessed to know the Woodruff's my whole life. I was actually the flower girl in their wedding. When you know a lot of the details, it's hard to not want to share everything! But, I was super proud of what I managed to pack into my word limit. I feel like Woody is one of Knoxville's best kept secrets, and I really wanted to share how big that prelim night win was for him and the entire team. It will be cool to see what Trey can get accomplished in 2020 after a full season at Knoxville, we all know how important getting laps in at that track is, for success.

I personally feel like I am a grammar nazi, and I am also the same way when reading anything from text messages to magazine articles. It was important to me to send something to Justin that didn't require a lot of fixing. I'm glad someone else noticed my passion for commas, apostrophes, and pronouns! I hate being distracted from content based on grammatical errors.

I actually worked really hard for accuracy, I consulted with Eric Arnold at Knoxville to make sure my statistics on Jeff were correct and as accurate as possible. Brad and Jessie were so forth coming in the time they spent with me (nearly three hours between the two), that they were great with providing dates, names, etc, it was super easy to research through the internet and make sure the information I was providing the public was also accurate and wouldn't make anyone look like they were falsifying anything to make themselves look better.

Before the articles came out, 34 actually secured the WoO for July, for the first time in several years, and added a few other big name events to their schedule. I'm super excited for them, and feel like the article is only going to boost the interest of the public in going to their track - and they work so hard, they deserve all of this positive recognition! It's hard to compete when Knoxville is only a few hours from your back door, and in my humble opinion, I think they do one heck of a job in standing out.

I have 6 more articles coming with Dirt Monthly, so far, and I'm very excited to share them and work with the people I have been given the opportunities to talk to!